All right.

Environmental robustness.

First of all, I would say that unmanned airships

are really going to be a big game changer in the field of infrastructure inspections.

Without going into every detail

because my focus is on something else

we have a huge potential for

automating manual work with airships.

We have a huge potential for being more environmentally

friendly with airships and we have the advantage of flying longer and not crashing like a stone

but having something like a flying airbag, how I like to call it.

But on the other side, as you

know, airships aren't magic and also they can't defy physics.

So I think when we inspect

infrastructure, we have two main opponents, like I would call them.

So there is wind,

gusts, thermals.

Maybe you could generalize it to moving air or movement changes of air.

And then there is temperature changes

superheat inside the hull and atmospheric pressure changes.

So you could sum it up as pressure changes of the air.

And let's have a look at these two issues.

And let's start with the pressure changes.

In airship history, there has already been done a

huge deal about dealing with pressure changes.

And the most beautiful, most advanced way of

dealing with pressure changes is, of course, the rigid airship, because it just doesn't care.

But then there are these blimps that we love to use as airship drones because they have some

advantages for transporting.

And for blimps, as you know, there is these ballonets, maybe one,

maybe two to have an even keel.

But there has lately been also new ideas for ballonets or for

pressure regulating systems.

For example, there is this shape changing invention by Keelu that

has internal tensioners inside the gas bag that kind of squeeze the gas bag together when the

pressure isn't sufficient.

And also in our team at RuboLun, our team member Mark Summers has come

up with a very nice idea for a rubber belt tensioner.

So you have this rubber belt around

the gas bag.

And when the pressure decreases, then this will get smaller in diameter and you have a

covering sheet over it so you don't have that drag involved.

If you want to know more about that,

you can ask me later.

This has been built and tested by Mark and I can also show you videos.

But today I want to show you yet another experiment for using a passive ballonet or a

passive pressure regulator, as I would call it.

Because these passive approaches, they have the

advantage that you don't need these active pumps

these active valves