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Archive for the ‘drones’ category: Page 58

Oct 3, 2021

GPUs open the potential to forecast urban weather for drones and air taxis

Posted by in categories: drones, supercomputing

The future of package delivery, taxis, and even takeout in cities may be in the air—above the gridlocked streets. But before a pizza-delivery drone can land safely on your doorstep, the operators of these urban aircraft will need extremely high-resolution forecasts that can predict how weather and buildings interact to create turbulence and the resulting impacts on drones and other small aerial vehicles.

While scientists have been able to run simulations that capture the bewilderingly complex flow of air around buildings in the urban landscape, this process can take days or even weeks on a supercomputing system—a timeline far too slow (and a task far too computationally expensive) to be useful to daily weather forecasters.

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Oct 2, 2021

3D Printed VTOL Craft Can Land And Recharge Itself, And Team Up With Other Drones

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

For a long time fixed wing VTOL drones were tricky to work with, but with the availability of open source flight control and autopilot software this has changed. To make experimentation even easier, [Stephen Carlson] and other researchers from the RoboWork Lab at the University of Nevada created the MiniHawk, a 3D printed VTOL aircraft for use a test bed for various research projects.

Some of these project include creating a longer wingspan aircraft by combining multiple MiniHawks in mid-flight with magnetic wing-tip mounts, or “migratory behaviors”. The latter is a rather interesting idea, which involves letting the craft land in any suitable location, and recharging using wing mounted solar panels before continuing with the next leg of the mission. With this technique, the MiniHawk could operate on mission almost indefinitely without human intervention. This is a departure from some other solar planes we’ve seen, which attempt to recharge while flying, or even ditch batteries completely, which limits operation to sunny weather conditions.

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Sep 29, 2021

Clues to the Origins of Life in Our Solar System

Posted by in categories: chemistry, drones, space

When people think about the search for life beyond Earth they often think about looking beyond our solar system and even beyond our galaxy. But what about looking closer to home? Titan, Saturn’s largest moon has a dense atmosphere, an internal liquid water ocean, and stable bodies of liquid methane on its surface. While we have not found any evidence of life on Titan, its chemistry and environment make it an interesting place to explore. Europa is a moon of Jupiter with a water-ice crust and liquid ocean underneath. Its atmosphere is very thin, but it’s composed mostly of oxygen.

Zibi (Elizabeth) Turtle is the principal investigator of the Dragonfly mission which will land a drone-like vehicle on Titan to conduct sorties to sample and examine sites around Titan. Morgan Cable is also on the Dragonfly Team, and both Zibi and Morgan are working on the Europa Clipper mission which will perform reconnaissance of Europa to investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life. Join Zibi and Morgan, along with SETI Institute planetary astronomer Franck Marchis for their discussion about what makes Titan and Europa such intriguing places to search for clues about the origins of life in our solar system.

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Sep 24, 2021

Turkey’s Baykar rolls out its vertical take-off, landing drone

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

Leading defense company Baykar has unveiled for the first time its newly designed drone that can hover, take off and land vertically at Turkey’s largest technology and aviation event, Teknofest.

The flight tests of the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are due to be completed soon. Mass production and delivery phases are expected to start in 2022.

The new UAV does not need a landing track and can take off from several different places, including naval or mobile platforms, said Burak Özbek, an air vehicle design engineer at Baykar, which is already known worldwide for its landmark Bayraktar TB2 and Akıncı drones.

Sep 23, 2021

DronePaint: A human-swarm interaction system for environment exploration and artistic painting

Posted by in categories: drones, information science

Researchers at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia have recently developed an innovative system for human-swarm interactions that allows users to directly control the movements of a team of drones in complex environments. This system, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv is based on an interface that recognizes human gestures and adapts the drones’ trajectories accordingly.

Quadcopters, drones with four rotors that can fly for long periods of time, could have numerous valuable applications. For instance, they could be used to capture images or videos in natural or remote environments, can aid search-and– and help to deliver goods to specific locations.

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Sep 18, 2021

Chinese scientists’ robot fish could pave way for low-cost prosthetics

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, drones, robotics/AI

The researchers, from the University of Science and Technology of China, hope that the technique – which uses liquid metal to mimic natural muscle movements — could also help to administer drugs inside the body and underwater drones.


Researchers created an artificial muscle using liquid metal that allows it to expand and contract and hope one day to use the technology to help humans.

Sep 18, 2021

UK Ministry of Defence Employed Rafael’s Drone Dome to Defend G7 Summit from Drone Threats

Posted by in categories: business, drones, information science, robotics/AI, space

Earlier this year, in June 2,021 the British Ministry of Defence employed Rafael’s DRONE DOME counter-UAV system to protect world leaders during the G7 Summit in Cornwall, England from unmanned aerial threats. Three years ago, Britain’s Defence Ministry purchased several DRONE DOME systems which it has successfully employed in a multitude of operational scenarios, including for protecting both the physical site and participants of this year’s G7 summit. Rafael’s DRONE DOME is an innovative end-to-end, combat-proven counter-Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS), providing all-weather, 360-degree rapid defence against hostile drones. Fully operational and globally deployed, DRONE DOME offers a modular, robust infrastructure comprised of electronic jammers and sensors and unique artificial intelligence algorithms to effectively secure threatened air space.

Meir Ben Shaya, Rafael EVP for Marketing and Business Development of Air Defence Systems: Rafael today recognizes two new and key trends in the field of counter-UAVs, both of which DRONE DOME can successfully defend against. The first trend is the number of drones employed during an attack, and the operational need to have the ability counter multiple, simultaneous attacks; this is a significant, practical challenge that any successful system must be able to overcome. The second trend is the type of tool being employed. Previously, air defense systems were developed to seek out conventional aircraft, large unmanned aerial vehicles, and missile, but today these defense systems must also tackle smaller, slower, low-flying threats which are becoming more and more autonomous.

Sep 17, 2021

This Mysterious Unmanned Vessel Was Just Spotted In San Diego Bay (Updated)

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

The low-slung drone-ship catamaran is equipped with solar panels, various antennae, and camera systems.

Sep 17, 2021

This drone-deploying blimp could be Amazon’s next aerial fulfillment center

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

An army of drones descending over a city from a massive corporate airship…damn, amazon just out-cyberpunked cyberpunk itself.


While the origin of this video has something, in part, to do with April Fool’s day, there’s some truth to this concept too. Amazon has, for long, been experimenting with aerial deliveries, sending unmanned drones to fulfill package deliveries. In fact, the blimp idea isn’t completely far-fetched, either. Click the below link to read the entire article.

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Sep 15, 2021

US Navy, Boeing conduct first-ever refueling between unmanned tanker, F-35C

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI, virtual reality

“Once operational, the MQ-25 will refuel every receiver-capable platform including E-2,” Reed said in a separate news release on the August flight test between T1 and the Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Two Zero (VX) 20. “This flight keeps us on a fast track to getting the Stingray out to the fleet where its refueling capability will greatly increase the range and operational flexibility of the carrier air wing and strike group.”

The first aerial refueling test was conducted on June 4, when an F/A-18E-F Super Hornet refueled in air with the unmanned tanker for the first time in naval aviation history. In this first in-air encounter with the drone, a Super Hornet approached to take measurements, made several “dry connects” to practice connecting and detaching from the tanker, and made two actual refuelings, with 300 pounds and then 25 pounds of fuel being passed from the Stingray to the Super Hornet at different altitudes and flying conditions.

Last month, the Navy and Boeing conducted in a virtual environment the first manned-unmanned teaming event between the Stingray and a Super Hornet, where the manned jet bypassed the ground control station and communicated directly with the tanker drone to give directions on where and when to rendezvous for a refueling.

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