The Tank

The Tank

V-SMART: Vehicle for Slow-Motion Analysis and Research of Tornadic winds

This is a project that we have been talking about and planning for over a year. It started off with just toying with the idea, talking through what we could do with what we have, and it took off from there, with a lot of insight and advice from MANY people.

Goal: to successfully get within 50 yards of a tornado's core flow, and document it in 1080i at the standard 30fps, as well as 300-600fps(at a much lower resolution, of course), depending on strength/structure/debris field. The intense upward motion we would LOVE to see at 600fps isn't present in a large percentage of tornadoes. This motion can be seen here at 2:40-3:10 and again at 3:15 through the rest of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWs7R0qSDuo&feature=related

Tornadoes displaying this incredibly intense upward suction are extremely rare. In this intense upward suction, there is motion that is too fast for the naked eye, as well as the normal 30fps video camera. We hope to capture that motion, hopefully then we can learn something from it.

Project overview: The current design is a custom-shaped tornado-safe vehicle which will be shaped as close to the standard turtle probe as possible with a small camera turret.We do not plan on purposely taking direct-hits from tornadoes, and we have a VERY healthy respect for tornadoes, and what they are capable of; however, if we encounter a weak tornado with no debris, why not intercept it? Our vehicle will be significantly smaller and lighter than TIV2 and SRV.