![]() This allows the aircraft to tilt its rotors and fly in any direction while maintaining a level platform.Īs soon as flight controls and other electronic systems, such as cameras and GPS navigation, caught up with Vanderlip’s idea, the quadcopter drone took to the skies in swarms. The drone design has “four lift rotors arranged in pairs at opposite ends” so that the vertical axis of tilt is always perpendicular to the ground. His patent for an “omni-directional, vertical-lift, helicopter drone” outlines a UAV designed to be “extremely simple” to fly. Vanderlip then had the idea to incorporate pilot-friendly flight systems into a small, remotely-operated rotary aircraft. Vanderlip, an engineer for Piasecki Aircraft Corporation, first designed a way to allow a helicopter’s instruments to continue functioning in the event of a power failure. ![]() The quadcopter drone, found today buzzing over parks and bothering airplanes, was first patented back in 1962. Patent Name: “Omni-directional, vertical-lift, helicopter drone” □ Way Cool: At the Bionic Olympics, Engineers and Athletes Make Miracles USPTO Future construction workers, soldiers, and even astronauts could make use of exoskeleton suits. ReWalk, which holds this 2014 patent for a powered exoskeleton, builds an exoskeleton used in rehab centers that allows people with lower paralysis to learn to sit, stand, walk, and even climb stairs.Īdditional designs are in the works at MIT and the European Space Agency. The technology continued to improve, and a variety of companies have invested in exoskeletons designed to help people with varying levels of paralysis or to assist workers on the job site. The large mechanical suit was designed to amplify the strength of a soldier so he or she could lift 1,500 pounds, but the exoskeleton suffered from violent and uncontrolled movements when at full power and was never tested with a human inside. military launched a powered exoskeleton project called Hardiman, developed by General Electric. The unpowered exoskeleton used compressed gas to store energy and help with movement. Patent Name: “Locomotion assisting device and method”Įxoskeletons have a long history, dating back to the “apparatus for facilitating walking” invented by Nicholas Yagin in 1890. □ Choo Choo! This 34,000-Ton ‘Infinity Train’ Will Recharge Itself. In the future, hyperloop systems could use similar technology to float and accelerate passenger pods in a vacuum-sealed tube, potentially hitting speeds as high as 750 miles per hour. A German-developed Transrapid in Shanghai is the fastest commercial train in service with a top operating speed of 270 miles per hour, while a L0-series maglev train prototype in Japan set the speed record for a train at 375 miles per hour. A maglev shuttle was opened in the United Kingdom in 1995, and the Germans built and tested a number of prototypes resulting in the Transrapid. When Laithwaite’s work on linear induction motors was married to Powell and Danby’s design for a floating train, the first commercial maglev trains were born. Their design was intended to use superconducting electromagnets to generate “a suspension force, for floating the train above the ground,” and it was to use a “propellor, jet, rocket” to achieve thrust. Laithwaite’s work was widely studied, and in 1967, James Powell and Gordon Danby of the Brookhaven National Laboratory received the first patent for a maglev train. Laithwaite tested linear induction motors that could use magnets to achieve both lift and forward thrust. The inventor realized a linear motor, which does not require contact with a railroad track, could be used to develop a transportation system based on magnetic fields. ![]() ![]() The story of the maglev train begins with Eric Laithwaite and his work on full-size linear induction motors. Patent Name: “Electromagnetic inductive suspension and stabilization system for a ground vehicle”
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