Lifeboat Foundation

The Marines want to unleash swarms of loitering munitions on its adversaries.

Meet the Smellicopter is a tiny drone developed by scientists at the University of Washington, capable of detecting smells like gas leaks, explosives, or even the survivors of a natural disaster. This amazing, obstacle avoiding UAV doesn’t use a man-made sensor to smell: it uses a moth antenna to navigate towards an odor.

A research paper published in IOP Science describes Smellicopter as “A bio-hybrid odor-guided autonomous palm-sized air vehicle.” The advantages to such a vehicle are clear: the tiny drone can travel in places that humans cannot or should not: the rubble of buildings after a natural disaster; zones where chemical leaks or spills may have occurred; or conflict zones that may contain chemical or explosive weapons.

Continue reading “Smellicopter Tiny Drone Uses Moth Antenna to Find Smells” »

A conflict monitor says an engine, akin to those used in V-1 flying bombs, was found in Iraq in 2017.

Drone services company DroneUp has been approved for an industry-first FAA Waiver for flight over people and moving vehicles to support drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits anywhere in the U.S.

Scaling drone delivery throughout the country will require flight over people and moving vehicles, something that U.S. drone regulations currently prohibit without a waiver. Now, DroneUp, LLC announces that it has been approved “for the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) Section 107.39 Operation Over People Waiver allowing the unrestricted flight over non-participating persons and moving vehicles to support the drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits,” according to a press release.

“DroneUp’s 107.39 waiver is the first to allow drone delivery operations over people anywhere in the United States without predefined operating areas, locations, or routes. The waiver is also a first to allow unrestricted delivery overflight of moving vehicles.”

DroneSeed will be allowed to operates drones beyond visual line of sight.

DroneSeed, a company that uses fleets of drones to reforest areas burned in wildfires, received approval in October from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for its heavy-lift drones to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) and to expand its use of heavy-lift drone swarms to California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

Continue reading “FAA gives approval for company to use swarms of drones to reforest burned areas” »

The latest rescue took place last month, when sherriff’s deputies found a missing 93-year-old woman in a dark field in Missouri – using a DJI drone with a thermal imaging camera. That brings the total to more than 500 lives saved by drones, according to DJI’s project counting the lives that would have been lost without direct intervention of drone technology.

DJI began the project back in 2017 when they published a paper called “Lives Saved: A Survey of Drones in Action” which found that even back in 2016 – 2017, drones saved lives at the rate of nearly 1 per week. That first paper has evolved into the DJI Drone Rescue Map, which allows viewers to explore rescue incidents all over the world.

The project was started in response to bad press about drone technology. Research has shown that a negative drone event – even one that later is found to be inaccurate or untrue – averages more than 10x the publicity than a positive drone event. That’s a problem for a new industry struggling against negative public perception and fears over privacy issues and misuse of drone technology.

Landing pads, special mailboxes and more: A future where delivery drones buzz through neighborhoods could prompt architects and builders to rethink.

Aevum’s RAVN-X targeting “smallsat” market with 2021 Space Force launch.

The Marine Corps is looking for industry sources to produce a man-portable system capable of launching swarms of kamikaze drones over contested battlefields, according to a new notice.

In a request for information published earlier this month, Marine Corps System Command detailed a fresh need for an “individually operated, man-portable, anti-materiel, anti-personnel ground-launched loitering munition system” for fielding to grunts in the coming years.

The so-called Organic Precision Fire-Infantry (OPF-I) capability will consist of a fresh infantry-operated system capable of launching drones that can conduct explosive strikes and are “capable of swarming” over a 20-kilometer range for up to an hour and a half, according to the notice.