Drones & UAVs News & Discussions

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caltrek
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International OK Shapes Public Perceptions of Drone Warfare
April 15, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949888

Introduction:
(Cornell University via EurekAlert) ITHACA, N.Y. -- Armed drone strikes earn more public support and legitimacy when they have international approval from organizations such as the United Nations, according to a survey conducted by a team of Cornell researchers.

Drones that carry weapons are increasingly employed as counterterrorism tools, but nations use and constrain strikes differently. France, for example, submits its strikes to the U.N. for approval; the U.S. typically does not.

This difference matters when it comes to public support and perceptions of legitimacy, according to doctoral students Paul Lushenko and Shyam Raman, and Sarah Kreps, the John L. Wetherill Professor of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

The researchers cite as examples two drone strikes in 2021. France used a drone to kill Adnan al-Sahrawi, the Islamic State’s leader in western Africa. Soon after, the U.S. used drones to kill two al-Qaida leaders in Syria.

While the weapons were similar, the approaches were not. France went to the U.N. in advance to secure backing; the U.S. acted unilaterally.
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caltrek
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Autonomous Drones Designed to Navigate a Dense Forest
By Devin Coldewey
May 4, 2022

https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/04/swarm ... e-a-human/

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) If drones are to take over any of the numerous tasks they are supposed to, they’re going to have to get a lot smarter — and learn to work together. In a demonstration of both of these things, Chinese researchers show off a swarm of drones collectively navigating a dense forest they’ve never encountered.

We’ve seen drone swarms before, going back a long ways in fact, but while they’re often well coordinated, they’re not collectively autonomous. That is, although they fly in an adjustable formation and avoid obstacles, their trajectories are being controlled by a central computer monitoring their positions and issuing commands.

As you can imagine, it would be useful to have drones that can coordinate their movements with each other, absent any central organizing function. But this is difficult to effect, since the bulk of the sensors and computational resources needed to quickly and effectively perceive and react to the environment are detrimental to the very agility needed to do so.

Researchers at Zheijang University in Hangzhou have succeeded, however, with a 10-strong drone swarm smart enough to fly autonomously through a dense, unfamiliar forest, but small and light enough that each one can easily fit in the palm of your hand. It’s a big step towards using swarms like this for things like aerial surveying and disaster response.

Based on an off-the-shelf ultra-compact drone design, the team built a trajectory planner for the group that relies entirely on data from the onboard sensors of the swarm, which they process locally and share with each other. The drones can balance or be directed to pursue various goals, such as maintaining a certain distance from obstacles or each other, or minimizing the total flight time between two points, and so on.
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^ Video of the above.


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Don't mourn, organize.

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Snap’s new flying camera, the $230 Pixy drone, went on sale last week — but the earliest buyers were told they’d have to wait three months to actually get the gadget. We’re now thinking that the company didn’t make enough, because Snap has extended the Pixy’s shipping time to four whole months, according to the drone’s website.


And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Drones to Save Lives by Providing Urban-Grade Healthcare In Rural Areas of India
May 18, 2022

Introduction:
(Eurasia Review) A new experimental programme has shown how drone technology can be used to bring quality healthcare to people living in the remotest areas of India.

Healthcare professionals delivered vaccines, COVID-19 testing samples and medical products to a population of over 300,000 people represented by eight district health facilities in the Vikarabad district of the southern state of Telangana. The district was chosen because it includes communities living in the dense forests of the Anantagiri hills. The trial involved over 300 drone sorties in a 45-day period.

The trial oversaw the first vaccine delivery over long range (beyond visual line of sight) in Asia. It is part of a wider programme, Medicine from the Sky, led by the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution India, in partnership with the Government of Telangana, Apollo Hospital’s Healthnet Global and NITI Aayog, the Indian government’s federal think-tank. The programme aims to work with business, policy-makers and communities to use drone technology to extend urban-grade healthcare to India’s remotest areas. Multiple stakeholders were consulted throughout, including healthcare workers, local communities, local police, district-level administrators and local air traffic control.
Read more: https://www.eurasiareview.com/18052022- ... -of-india/
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This air drone can now swim and be Spiderman if it wants to be. ;)


This is going to render submarines obsolete. A swarm of those drones jerry-rigged with bombs can latch on to the surface of a submarine. :?

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Walmart Drone Delivery Headed to 4 Million Households
May 24, 2022

Introduction:
(The Produce News) Walmart is expanding its DroneUp delivery network to 34 sites by the end the year, providing the potential to reach 4 million U.S. households across six states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia. This provides the company with the ability to deliver over 1 million packages by drone in a year.

"We continue to expand our delivery operations to help customers get the items they need when they need them, and it’s been an exciting journey," said David Guggina, senior vice president of innovation and automation. "From Express delivery, where customers can have items delivered to their doorsteps in as little as two hours, to InHome, where they can get those orders placed right into their refrigerators, we’re proud to offer customers multiple options that help them save time and money."

Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., customers will be able to order from tens of thousands of eligible items for delivery by air in as little as 30 minutes. Customers can order items totaling up to 10 pounds.

After completing hundreds of deliveries within a matter of months across its existing DroneUp hubs, Walmart has seen how drones can offer customers a practical solution for getting certain items, fast. "More importantly, we’ve seen a positive response from our customers that have used the service," said Guggina. "In fact, while we initially thought customers would use the service for emergency items, we’re finding they use it for its sheer convenience, like a quick fix for a weeknight meal. Case in point: The top-selling item at one of our current hubs is Hamburger Helper."

Participating stores will house a DroneUp delivery hub inclusive of a team of certified pilots, operating within FAA guidelines, that safely manage flight operations for deliveries. Once a customer places an order, the item is fulfilled from the store, packaged, loaded into the drone and delivered right to their yard using a cable that gently lowers the package.
https://theproducenews.com/headlines/wa ... households
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Open-source and open hardware autonomous quadrotor flies fast and avoids obstacles
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-06-ope ... flies.html
by Bob Yirka , Tech Xplore
A team of researchers at the University of Zurich, has developed a highly agile quadrotor drone that is able to avoid obstacles and carry out trajectory tracking. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes how they designed their drone, what they put into it and how well it worked when tested.

Quadrotor drones can be very agile fliers, most particularly when they have a human pilot guiding their movements. Autonomous quadrotors, on the other hand, have suffered from agility issues, particularly when traveling at high speeds. In this new effort, the team in Switzerland has improved the agility of a quadrotor drone with their new design built using a variety of technologies.
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Integrating Drones in Urban Airspaces – European Demonstration Program Begins at Cranfield
June 30, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert)
• European project is conducting demonstration flights of drones in urban environments across the UK, Netherlands and Spain
• First demonstration in Cranfield, UK, on 30 June, tests the feasibility of urban air mobility management systems, and paves the way for more complex trials
• Project gives a glimpse of the future, with increased use of urban airspaces by a variety of drones

In the near future city-dwellers can expect to see a variety of drones in the airspace above where they live, perhaps transporting patients to hospitals, helping tackle fires, or simply delivering parcels. This vision of Urban Air Mobility (UAM), making use of different types of drones, will also help people travel faster and more efficiently through unmanned air taxis – and researchers say it will be in place in a matter of a few years.

A new European project, AMU-LED, is now carrying out co-ordination and substantial testing to manage this airspace traffic and check safety, interoperability and feasibility. The first trial demonstration takes place at Cranfield University, UK, on 30 June, and will be followed by other trial events in the Netherlands and Spain.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/957577
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