Archive for the ‘drones’ category: Page 58
Oct 13, 2021
Autonomous drones can now zip through the woods at insane speeds
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: drones, information science, robotics/AI
Thanks to artificial intelligence, drones can now fly autonomously at remarkably high speeds, while navigating unpredictable, complex obstacles using only their onboard sensing and computation.
This feat was achieved by getting the drone’s neural network to learn flying by watching a sort of “simulated expert” – an algorithm that flew a computer-generated drone through a simulated environment full of complex obstacles. Now, this “expert” could not be used outside of simulation, but its data was used to teach the neural network how to predict the best trajectory, based only on the data from the sensors.
Oct 9, 2021
Bipedal robot can ride a skateboard and walk a slackline
Posted by Future Timeline in categories: drones, robotics/AI
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have built a bipedal robot that combines walking with flying to create a new type of locomotion, making it exceptionally nimble and capable of complex movements.
Part walking robot, part flying drone, the newly developed LEONARDO (short for LEgs ONboARD drOne, or LEO for short) can walk a slackline, hop, and even ride a skateboard. Developed by a team at Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST), LEO is the first robot that uses multi-joint legs and propeller-based thrusters to achieve a fine degree of control over its balance.
“We drew inspiration from nature. Think about the way birds are able to flap and hop to navigate telephone lines,” explained Soon-Jo Chung, Professor of Aerospace and Control and Dynamical Systems. “A complex yet intriguing behaviour happens as birds move between walking and flying. We wanted to understand and learn from that.”
Oct 9, 2021
Alphabet’s Wing tests drone deliveries from shopping center rooftops in Australia
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: biotech/medical, business, drones
It’s piloting the new delivery model in Logan, Queensland.
Alphabet subsidiary Wing has launched a pilot program that will have its drones fly products from the rooftops of shopping centers. In fact, it has already started the program in its biggest market, Logan, Australia. The subsidiary has teamed up with Australian retail property group, Vicinity Centres, to test the new model at Logan’s Grand Plaza, where Wing’s drones have been flying orders to customers from businesses directly below their launching pad.
Wing has been operating in Logan over the past two years, but up until now, businesses have had to co-locate their products at the company’s delivery facility. This is the first time the subsidiary is conducting deliveries from participating merchants’ existing location instead. Wing has been flying its drones from the rooftop of Grand Plaza since mid-August, delivering sushi, bubble tea, smoothies and other products from merchants in the shopping center. Starting today, the drones will also deliver over-the-counter medicine and personal care and beauty products.
Oct 8, 2021
FINALLY! SpaceX Is Testing Their New Starship Droneship!
Posted by Claudio Soprano in categories: drones, economics, space travel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds9EcRBZzWE
One of the most critical aspects of SpaceX’s quest for the reusability of its space hardware is the recovery of its booster. To achieve this, SpaceX decided to land its boosters on the sea. However, the boosters land on large drone ships to prevent losing the booster and transport it back to land.
After many successful landings and recovery of the boosters, the large and dependable drone ships have become a vital link in SpaceX’s dream to make space travel affordable. SpaceX recently added another drone ship to the pair it had in service.
Join us as we explore SpaceX’s insane new drone ship!
To the armchair engineer, landing a rocket in the sea is suicide as many things can go wrong. To start with, when floating on the sea, the drone ship or barge is small compared to all the land available for the booster to land on.
Compounding the problem is that the drone ship itself can be rocked about on the sea, more than 300 km off the coast.
So, combining the size and instability of the drone ship, the booster can miss the drone ship and crash into the sea, making it harder or even impossible to recover.
However, many things have gone wrong as SpaceX tried to land a rocket on land, with several boosters crashing and bursting into flames.
Apart from that, SpaceX has very good reasons to prefer a sea landing for its boosters, and the reason has to do with fuel.
Fuel is a critical component on any mission because the engineers have to balance carrying enough quantity of it and keeping the rocket as light as possible. As you can imagine, the Falcon 9 rockets are heavy, at more than half a million kilograms which means fuel is a premium.
This is how it breaks down:
When you launch to space and the booster returns, you need to slow down the speed from more than 8,000 km/h down to zero. This is done by reigniting the engine, and it requires fuel.
The fuel has to come from the leftover after boosting the upper stage.
This is where it gets interesting.
If you blasted a payload to low orbit, for example, you would have more than enough fuel for the landing. However, if the mission was destined for beyond Earth’s orbit, you will need more fuel because you have to launch faster. This will leave you with no fuel for the landing.
This will be a big blow to SpaceX’s dream of reusing its boosters. Recall that the company wants to launch missions to Mars, which will require lots of fuel to attain the speed necessary for launch but not enough fuel for landing.
However, there is a way out of this problem with the aid of geography.
When SpaceX launches from Florida, the rocket heads East over the Atlantic Ocean. So making the rocket land at sea and not having to return to the launch site will reduce the fuel required because the distance is shorter.
This means for more ambitious launches, it makes sense for SpaceX to land on the sea.
As Musk put it at a conference, “For half our missions, we will need to land out to sea. Anything beyond Earth is likely to need to land on the ship.”
Now, what motivation does SpaceX have to land and reuse its boosters?
The motivation is money. SpaceX wants to save money on its launches, and refurbishing a rocket saves time and costs a fraction of building a new one.
Just how much money is SpaceX saving?
We might never get an actual figure because it is a trade secret, but it is a play on several factors.
For example, to save some fuel for landing, it means you have to reduce your payload. For the Falcon 9 that means a reduction of up to 40 percent in revenue, according to Musk’s tweet:
Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3
Continue reading “FINALLY! SpaceX Is Testing Their New Starship Droneship!” »
Oct 5, 2021
Swarm grammar: DARPA to test whether single user can control 200 drones
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: drones
Contractor Northrop Grumman is wants to transition this DARPA swarming program to the Army.
Oct 5, 2021
Blockchain technology could provide secure communications for robot teams
Posted by Gemechu Taye in categories: bitcoin, cybercrime/malcode, drones, robotics/AI
The transaction-based communications system ensures robot teams achieve their goal even if some robots are hacked.
Imagine a team of autonomous drones equipped with advanced sensing equipment, searching for smoke as they fly high above the Sierra Nevada mountains. Once they spot a wildfire, these leader robots relay directions to a swarm of firefighting drones that speed to the site of the blaze.
But what would happen if one or more leader robots was hacked by a malicious agent and began sending incorrect directions? As follower robots are led farther from the fire, how would they know they had been duped?
Continue reading “Blockchain technology could provide secure communications for robot teams” »
Oct 3, 2021
GPUs open the potential to forecast urban weather for drones and air taxis
Posted by Genevieve Klien 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.
Continue reading “GPUs open the potential to forecast urban weather for drones and air taxis” »
Oct 2, 2021
3D Printed VTOL Craft Can Land And Recharge Itself, And Team Up With Other Drones
Posted by Genevieve Klien 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.
Sep 29, 2021
Clues to the Origins of Life in Our Solar System
Posted by Alan Jurisson 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.
Continue reading “Clues to the Origins of Life in Our Solar System” »