Indian Army’s Drone Use: Satellite Navigation in GPS-Denied Environments by Kartik Bommakanti
December 5, 2023
Introduction:
(Observer Foundation) The Indian Army (IA) recently announced a move to replace mules and choppers with drones for supplies along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, Leh, and Northeastern India. The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will supply medicines and food to troops in remotely deployed forces or Border Observation Posts (BOPs). Fitted with proximity sensors, these UAVs can fly in all weather conditions and they are all GPS-guided. This latest use of drones by the IA comes against the backdrop of the IA’s operational deployment of dedicated UAVs for Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) missions in Eastern Ladakh and along the Sino-Indian boundary in 2022. Serving as force-multipliers, these latter set of drones are Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled, making them capable of communicating with each other while coordinating and supporting close air-to-ground operations for the IA’s infantry, mechanised infantry, mobile artillery and armoured formations. In addition, the Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) system that they are equipped with can identify a whole range of targets including enemy artillery units, tanks, infantry formations, and static installations.
Although drones are a good substitute for piloted aircraft in hazardous weather conditions, it's obviously still best for their users if the things don't crash. The Czech-designed ThunderFly TF-G1 autogyro drone was created with that fact in mind.
Autogyros (aka gyroplanes or gyrocopters) are small aircraft with a powered propeller that pushes or pulls them forward, along with a non-powered set of rotor blades on top. As the prop moves the plane horizontally, air passes through the rotor blades, causing them to spin and produce lift.
It's sort of like a cross between a helicopter and a fixed-wing airplane. That said, due to the manner in which autogyros create lift, they're considerably more energy-efficient than helicopters, plus they're easier to pilot.
They can also maintain stable flight at slower speeds than fixed-wing aircraft, plus they're much less affected by high winds and wind gusts. That's where the TF-G1 is intended to come in.
While it has a number of potential uses, the drone is designed chiefly for applications such as weather research and search and rescue. It can carry up to 5 kg (11 lb) worth of equipment like meteorological sensors and thermal cameras, and can reportedly flight for over one hour per charge of its lithium battery.
2024 Will be a Breakout Year for Delivery Drones by Joann Muller
January 2, 2024
Introduction:
(Axios) After more than a decade of development, delivery drones are finally going mainstream this year.
• Still, they won't be quite as ubiquitous as the blue Amazon vans or brown UPS trucks in your neighborhood — yet.
What's happening: With some (but not all) regulatory hurdles cleared, retailers, medical centers and logistics platforms will start offering drone delivery in many more suburban neighborhoods in 2024.
• That means receiving meals, prescriptions and household items at your doorstep in less than 30 minutes.
Why it matters: More electric drones in the sky means fewer noisy trucks on the road and less tailpipe emissions.
Oregon State University Study Shows One Person Can Supervise ‘Swarm’ of 100 Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles February 4, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) CORVALLIS, Ore. – Research involving Oregon State University has shown that a “swarm” of more than 100 autonomous ground and aerial robots can be supervised by one person without subjecting the individual to an undue workload.
The findings represent a big step toward efficiently and economically using swarms in a range of roles from wildland firefighting to package delivery to disaster response in urban environments.
“We don’t see a lot of delivery drones yet in the United States, but there are companies that have been deploying them in other countries,” said Julie A. Adams of the OSU College of Engineering. “It makes business sense to deploy delivery drones at a scale, but it will require a single person be responsible for very large numbers of these drones. I’m not saying our work is a final solution that shows everything is OK, but it is the first step toward getting additional data that would facilitate that kind of a system.”
The results, published in Field Robotics, stem from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’ program known as OFFSET, short for Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics. Adams was part of a group that received an OFFSET grant in 2017.
During the course of the four-year project, researchers deployed swarms of up to 250 autonomous vehicles – multi-rotor aerial drones, and ground rovers – able to gather information in “concrete canyon” urban surroundings where line-of-sight, satellite-based communication is impaired by buildings. The information the swarms collect during their missions at military urban training sites have the potential to help keep U.S. troops and civilians more safe.
BAE Systems shows off mystery drone at defense show
By David Szondy
February 07, 2024
In a teaser of things to come, BAE Systems has displayed a model of its future drone at the World Defense Show in Riyadh. Steeped in more mystery than a Raymond Chandler novel, it gives us a hint of what future military drones might look like.
International defense shows can often be more like bird watching events than showcases for the latest military hardware. Defense contractors don't just like to show off their wares for sale, they also like to give a glimpse of what might be on the way. Oftentimes, these will be in the form of models or concept images on display without any explanation of what they are.
Though this can be a bit frustrating for the curious, it does provide something of an air of adventure to the proceedings.
weatheriscool wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:21 am
BAE Systems shows off mystery drone at defense show
By David Szondy
February 07, 2024
In a teaser of things to come, BAE Systems has displayed a model of its future drone at the World Defense Show in Riyadh. Steeped in more mystery than a Raymond Chandler novel, it gives us a hint of what future military drones might look like.
International defense shows can often be more like bird watching events than showcases for the latest military hardware. Defense contractors don't just like to show off their wares for sale, they also like to give a glimpse of what might be on the way. Oftentimes, these will be in the form of models or concept images on display without any explanation of what they are.
Though this can be a bit frustrating for the curious, it does provide something of an air of adventure to the proceedings.
Researchers have proposed a new strategy for the shape assembly of robot swarms based on the idea of mean-shift exploration: When a robot is surrounded by neighboring robots and unoccupied locations, it actively gives up its current location by exploring the highest density of nearby unoccupied locations in the desired shape.
The study, titled, "Mean-shift exploration in shape assembly of robot swarms," has been published in Nature Communications.
This idea is realized by adapting the mean-shift algorithm, an optimization technique widely used in machine learning for locating the maxima of a density function.
When surrounded by other robots and unoccupied locations, a robot explores the highest density of nearby unoccupied locations in the desired shape as identified by the mean-shift optimization.
The proposed strategy was verified by experiments with swarms of 50 ground robots, which demonstrates its potential to be adapted to generate interesting behaviors including shape regeneration, cooperative cargo transportation, and complex environment exploration.
Dr. Roderich Gross at the University of Sheffield has collaborated on this work with researchers from Westlake University, Beihang University and Tsinghua University.
How ‘robocop’ police drones could soon be the first responders to 999 calls
March 7, 2024 3:33 pm
For Britons used to the first response to a 999 call to police being the reassuring siren of an approaching patrol car, the buzz overhead of a remotely-operated drone may seem a disconcerting alternative.
This, however, was the glimpse of future policing reality offered by Jeremy Hunt when he used his Budget speech to announce £230m for law enforcement technology, including the advent of drones as emergency first responders.
Police in Britain already fly some 400 quadcopters carrying cameras and sensors, for uses from monitoring large-scale events to recording crime locations. But while these drones are piloted by officers on the scene, who must maintain visual contact with their airborne machine, the new system envisaged by the Government and senior police officers looks very different.
Instead of using machines unpacked at the scene of an emergency, the “drone as first responder” model (DFR in police jargon) will use multiple quadcopters stationed in launch boxes – commonly on top of buildings – and flown remotely by pilots from a central control room to wherever they are needed.
The result, according to proponents of the system, is that a drone can be at the site of a 999 call, relaying back to officers live images of what has happened or is happening, in a fraction of the time it takes for a police vehicle to arrive.
