Credit: RMIT University
Caleb White, an aerospace engineer, began flying radio-controlled gliders and other model aircraft from the age of 10 and learned to pilot a glider at 15.
These days he's program director for aerospace engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne; his key research interest is Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) and their uses for surveillance, and to understand air movements and the mechanics of flight.
These machines - with wingspans of up to a metre - look like sophisticated model planes, and come equipped with on-board smart systems. It means they can fly themselves and collect detailed data about where they travel.
"I'd always loved building and flying model planes," recalls White. "Becoming an aeronautical engineer seemed to be a logical progression." After completing high school in Victoria, he pursued a five-year double degree in aerospace engineering and business administration followed by a PhD at RMIT.
In Australia, with vast, often remote, inhospitable landscapes, the potential of MAVs for surveillance, information gathering and search-and-rescue is immense. Slightly larger versions of the machines White works on were used to search for survivors across northern Japan after a tsunami devastated the region in March.
Wind farms are another major area of potential application in Australia. "It's really important with wind farms to understand what the air around them is doing," White explains. "Where you put a wind farm will be influenced a lot by the local landscape. That's still very difficult to model with a computer, but having a very small aerial vehicle map what the air is doing would provide better information.
"The possibilities are growing as we get smaller aircraft and are able to put them exactly where we want," says White.
Small aircraft have power limitations as well as restricted capabilities to be able to respond to changes in the environment. Sudden wind gusts, for example, can be a major problem for MAVs.
The search for answers often involves looking at biological analogues, and White has "a lot of philosophical discussions" with colleagues about the capabilities of birds and flying insects. It could eventually help him build the ultimate flying machine.
