Robotics & Automation
Flimmer: The Flying, Swimming Drone
Dan Edwards of the U.S. Navy Research Laboratory is the principle investigator of Flimmer - a flying, swimming unmanned air vehicle (UAV)/unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV). Flimmer can operate in the air and underwater to significantly improve tactical availability of UUVs in time-critical situations. The concept could have wide-ranging uses, from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to lethal strike capabilities, to simple information gathering. "Flimmer would be delivering sensors for measuring either environmental parameters, looking for chemicals in the water. Flimmer could look for oil spills and try to find the source of, say, the Gulf coast leak," says Edwards.