Drones & UAVs News & Discussions

[firestar464]

More on that by WZTV-Nashville:

https://fox17.com/news/nation-world/den ... responders

[weatheriscool]

https://newatlas.com/aircraft/wave-puls ... eliveries/

Fire-spewing pulsejet engine with no moving parts gets real
By C.C. Weiss
July 11, 2024

In an effort to create a simpler, more affordable form of jet propulsion, University of Maryland spinoff Wave Engine Corporation has developed a digitally controlled modern-day pulsejet engine for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a design that uses no moving parts. After officially launching its first engine back in March, the company announced this week that it's delivered the first customer engines. This loud, pulse-combustion fire-breather is officially on its way to more air-bound vessels.

To get more specific (but not much), Wave announced on Tuesday the delivery of the first J-1 engines to an "aerospace prime contractor on contract with the US government" – Bond-style hush-hush stuff. The company also says it has other customers working to integrate the J-1s into their UAV designs.

The J-1, a trombone-looking contraption that seems to be most at home atop the aircraft fuselage, is designed for high-speed UAVs with up to 200-lb (90-kg) gross vehicle weights. It weighs 18 lb (8.2 kg) and measures 5.5 x 12.5 x 64 inches (14 x 32 x 163 cm). It can run on a number of fuels, including gasoline, E85 bioethanol or kerosene-based jet fuel, putting out up to 55 lbf (245 N) of thrust.

[caltrek]

Safe Drone Traffic in Smart Cities of the Future
July 15, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) After creating the world’s first self-organizing drone flock, researchers at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary have now also demonstrated the first large-scale autonomous drone traffic solution. This fascinating new system is capable of far more than what could be executed with human pilots.

The staff of the Department of Biological Physics at Eötvös University has been working on group robotics and drone swarms since 2009. In 2014, they created the world's first autonomous quadcopter flock consisting of at least ten units. The research group has now reached a new milestone by publishing the dense autonomous traffic of one hundred drones in the journal Swarm Intelligence.

But what is the difference between flocking and autonomous drone traffic?

In the former, the goal of the units is to get perfectly synchronized through coordinated joint movement, such as in a bird flock. In a traffic situation, however, drones may have individual routes and goals, leading to potential conflicts. This is particularly true when traffic does not occur on designated routes but in open spaces, when pedestrians crossing a square in arbitrary directions or drones moving freely in the open sky.

The ELTE researchers solved this problem by combining a special, forward-thinking and real-time updating route planner with the interactions of traditional bio-inspired flocking models. Thus, the autonomous robots can optimally avoid most traffic conflicts and safely manage the remaining ones by directly coordinating with their neighbors.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1051379

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

[Vakanai]

Funny the "instead of wars" comment coming from the 2nd or 3rd most funded military force in the world actively building up to invade their neighbor...

[firestar464]

(also they be mildly supportive of their northern neighbor's war)

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

Golden Eagle HS is a tiny copter with a big punch
By David Szondy
October 10, 2024
https://newatlas.com/military/golden-ea ... big-punch/

Military drones are moving into the heavy-hitting league, as Stedicopter shows off its Golden Eagle HS (Heavy Strike) Rotary Unmanned Aerial System (RUAS). It's a 50-kg (110-lb) autonomous helicopter that can carry a heavy anti-tank missile.

The latest member of Stedicopter's Golden Eagle family, the Golden Eagle HS is another example of how drones are expanding into every niche of the airborne military. Within a very short generation, RUAS and similar autonomous aircraft have gone from looking like something you'd buy at a hobby shop to an increasingly important part of the arsenals of every major military power.

Although it has a length of only about 10 ft (3 m) and weighs a mere 50 kg at takeoff, the Golden Eagle HS packs a serious tank-killing punch because it can be armed with either the Rafael Spike SR missile – with a range of 1.6 miles (2.5 km) – or the Spike LR2, that can reach 3.4 miles (5.5 km).

These are sixth-generation, precision-strike, fire-and-forget missiles that lock onto a target before launch and then automatically guide themselves in using an imaging infrared seeker. Each missile trails a fiber optic cable that allows an operator to switch targets while in flight. When the missile reaches the target, it takes it out using a high-explosive anti-tank warhead that can punch through 28 in (70 cm) of rolled armor.

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

Drone with its own 'nervous system' trialed by scientists

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-11-dro ... tists.html

[weatheriscool]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Automated inspection of offshore wind farms

5th December 2024

Scout, developed by Beam, promises to revolutionise the maintenance of offshore wind farms with its ability to perform independent inspections and deliver 3D views in real time at unprecedented resolution.

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... d-farm.htm

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

World's most affordable underwater drone gets a "treasure-hunting" upgrade
By Ben Coxworth
December 30, 2024

Back in 2019, Chasing Innovation introduced what was and still is the world's least expensive underwater drone, the Dory. The Chinese company is now offering a new version of the li'l remote-control sub, that comes complete with a joystick remote, metal detector and treasure-collecting net.
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Known as the Dory Explore, the new model is technically identical to the standard Dory – minus the attached metal detector and net, that is.

The 1.1-kg (2.4-lb) drone can dive to a maximum depth of 15 m (49 ft), and is linked via an electrical cable to a Wi-Fi buoy which is towed along the surface. Users control the Dory Explore (and view the real-time output of its HD camera) via an iOS/Android app. That app wirelessly communicates with the buoy over a distance of up to 15 meters.

Video is recorded at a maximum resolution of 1080p/30fps on the buoy's 16GB of internal memory.
Whereas the standard Dory is only available in high-visibility yellow, the Dory Explore comes in color choices of mint green or what could almost be described as "low-visibility" deep purple – what's up with that?

https://newatlas.com/drones/chasing-inn ... ter-drone/

[weatheriscool]

Robotic sea turtle could soon be swimming in an ocean near you
By Ben Coxworth
January 13, 2025

If you're setting out to build an underwater robot that's speedy, maneuverable and versatile, why not just copy what already works in the natural world? That's exactly what China's Beatbot has done, with its bio-inspired Amphibious RoboTurtle.

Unveiled in prototype form last week at CES, the autonomous robot is designed for applications including ecological research, environmental monitoring, and disaster response.

As such, it can be equipped with hardware such as a water sampling unit, GPS module, ultrasonic sensors, and AI-enabled cameras. The latter reportedly allow it to perceive and react to changes in its environment, and to autonomously track/follow marine animals.

https://newatlas.com/robotics/beatbot-a ... ea-turtle/

[wjfox]

Tiny insect-like robot can flip, loop and hover for up to 15 minutes

17 January 2025

An insect-inspired robot that only weighs as much as a raisin can perform acrobatics and fly for much longer than any previous insect-sized drone without falling apart.

For tiny flying robots to make nimble manoeuvres, they need to be lightweight and agile but also capable of withstanding large forces. Such forces mean that most tiny robots can only fly for around 20 seconds before breaking, which makes it difficult to collect enough data to properly calibrate and test the robots’ flying abilities.

Now, Suhan Kim at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have developed an insect-like flying robot about the size of a postage stamp that can execute acrobatic manoeuvres, such as double flips or tracing an infinity sign, and also hover in the air for up to 15 minutes without failing.

Kim and his team adapted the design from a previous flying robot, but they made the joints more resilient by having them connect across a larger part of the robot than at just a single failure point. This reduced the force through the joints by a factor of around 100, says Kim. They also used muscle-like soft actuators to move the wings, rather than standard electric motors.

“If you only have 20 seconds to fly the robot before it dies, then there’s not so much we can tune when we control the robot,” says Kim. “By having a hugely increased lifetime, we were able to work on the controller parts so that the robot can achieve precise trajectory tracking, plus aggressive manoeuvres like somersaults.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/24 ... 5-minutes/

[weatheriscool]

Impressive jumbo cargo drone lifts off, aces hover test in new video
By Michael Franco
February 09, 2025

Hybrid-electric aircraft maker Pipistrel just pushed its Nuuva V300 electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) craft through a major milestone. In the video below you can see it break the chains of gravity and hover midair in a first for the vehicle.

Most of the work that's been done in the development of VTOL craft has been in the passenger and personal flight sector. With the first fully certified eVTOL cleared for commercial air taxi work, the announcement that Pivotal Helix was set to begin shipping its single-seat electric VTOL last summer, and CycloTech announcing that it plans to test a new electric VTOL propulsion system this year in its BlackBird flying car, it won't be much longer before eVTOLs can whisk us Jetson-like from work to home or holiday.

Meanwhile, since winning NASA's Green Flight Challenge way back in 2011, Slovenian aircraft maker Pipstrel has been steadily developing hybrid and electric craft. In 2022, the company's Velis Electro became the world's first electric plane to be awarded type certification by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. And now, the company has reached another milestone as its Nuuva V300 hybrid-electric VTOL has successfully completed its first hover test, as you can see in the following video.

https://newatlas.com/aircraft/cargo-drone-hovers-test/