Small Planes: Paper airplane reference design
While searching the intertubes for fun stuff, I found an interesting paper that could be part of my goal to build a remote control paper airplane. The author, as part of his larger discussion, includes a description of a paper airplane with a PIC-16 based avionics using inertial measurement and voice-coil actuators. Rudimentary, but good stuff.
He describes his paper plane as a micro-UAV, part of a low-cost swarm dispersed at a height:
"Disposable folded cellulose-substrate micro-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) .. have the surprising potential to be effective platforms for deploying remote sensors at low-cost. With inexpensive inertial sensors and circuits printed on inexpensive structural material, the cost of a mini-scale aircraft can be reduced to the point that discarding the aircraft post-mission is economical. When launched from high-altitude balloons, [these] UAVs capable of navigating jet-stream winds could be guided to land anywhere on Earth with no additional power input."
Paul Pounds, "Paper Plane: Towards Disposable Low-Cost Folder Cellulose-Substrate UAVs" Australasian Conference on Robots and Automation 2012 Dec
via improbable.com