TKKYIA 2016

They say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once.

- Tony Stark, Iron Man (2008)

For once, I actually disagree with Tony Stark. In this ever developing age of computing and cyber warfare, most weapons are not really fired. Rather, most warfare occurs rather passively with spy missions or other reconnaissance missions being used to get military secrets from other countries. UAV's like drones and quadcopters are now becoming commonplace in a country's military arsenal and this is becoming a much larger part of military operations than actual invasion and the active act of war. Stealing IP of a country proves to be as effective as the active act of war.

Introduction

This year the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventor's Award (TKKYIA) 2016 launched and as usual we participated in the Defense Science section of it. Defense Science is quite important as we need to equip the country with the required tools and equipment to be prepared for war. This ensured National Security and reduces the threat of war.

The rapidly developing field of UAV's is proving to be incredibly effective and a game changer on the battlefield. As countries like USA use commercial drones, recently in 2013, the Japanese Ministry of Defense announced the Spherical Flight Vehicle. This is a bold step is the right direction as in the harsh conditions of war, quad copter lose out in terms of durability, cost and efficient.

SentiBots

If recognizing this problem is the first step, solving it should follow suit. We designed SentiBots to be an optimal drone for use in the military. The rare dual motor propulsion system with the 4 flap navigation reduces complexity, cost, and increases the efficiency of a system. In addition it is also swarm optimized, and the ability to move in a swarm offers benefits unmatched by any other drone system. You can also see that the electronics and processing is based on the Ediplane PCB which provides the necessary computing power.

This should give the Singapore military an edge over the competition and the SentiBot project is an ongoing project with regular updates being made to the design. You can follow our progress on our project page.

Conclusion

We won encouragement award in TKKYIA. We aim to continue work on it as it has several applications within and outside of military, and it's an exciting and educational project indeed!