Meet Spider, the tiny robot doctor for blimps
 

Meet Spider, the tiny robot doctor for blimps
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From Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works team — the same folks that brought you the strategic recon aircrafts U-2 Dragon Lady and SR-71 Blackbird as well as the stealth fighter jet F-117 Nighthawk — **w comes Spider (**t to be confused with this one), a device to repair blimps more efficiently than ever. *

As Skunk Works explains, old methods to repair blimps are time-consuming. One has to deflate the blimp (which can take hours), and walk around with a bright, handheld light, looking very carefully for rips and tears.

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By contrast, the Spider (short for Self-Propelled Instrument for Damage Evaluation and Repair), however, uses two magnetic halves, one to shine a bright LED light outside the blimp, and one that senses this light from the inside, thus exposing holes and problem areas. It can then move its *****ing mechanism over said hole, repair it, and then snap before and after pics of the fix, allowing a pair of human eyes to inspect it later. Read more...

More about Transportation, Spider, Robots, Blimps, and Techhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/Nl7dqEDCNBE