DroneDJ

XTEND AI Robotics has secured a new US patent for a technology that could make drone payloads far more than passive tools. The company announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted US Utility Patent No. 12,743,960, covering an architecture in which a “smart payload” can send real-time instructions to the robotic platform carrying it.

Flying a mapping drone is relatively easy. Getting consistently accurate, usable survey data out of it is a different story. That gap is what DJI is trying to address with its new Advanced GEO Products Training Services programme, which has now reached Europe’s Benelux region.

Finding the right company or product in the rapidly expanding drone and mobile robot industry can be harder than it sounds. There are thousands of specialized suppliers, but knowing which ones actually fit a particular requirement can take considerable research. Drone Industry Insights (DII) is trying to make that process easier with ASTRA Intelligence, a new searchable platform designed to connect companies, products and services across the global mobile robot ecosystem.

Zing Drone Solutions and South Korea-based NUCODE have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and reached a preliminary agreement to explore the development and supply of compact wireless modules for drone identification systems. The partnership comes as drone manufacturers and operators face growing requirements around Remote ID, which allows authorities and other approved parties to identify drones in flight.

Sky Elements just gave America a glimpse of what a truly massive drone show looks like. The US drone show company has set two Guinness World Records titles after flying more than 71,000 drones across seven shows over three consecutive nights in Blue Ridge, Texas. The effort included an 11,000-drone performance that the company says is the largest drone show ever flown in America.

Lucid Bots is giving its Sherpa cleaning drone a new way to tackle tall buildings: instead of making the aircraft carry the full weight of its cleaning hose, a new rooftop system takes some of that load off.

Wildfires are one of the hardest environments for autonomous drones to navigate. Smoke can obscure cameras, terrain can change quickly, and a drone carrying a heavy load has little room for error. That is why Ouster and Seneca are teaming up to give autonomous wildfire-response drones a better view of the world around them.

Counter-drone defense is becoming a bigger priority for military forces, and Echodyne has just secured a significant path to put more of its radar technology into those missions.

Fortem Technologies is putting fresh money behind its counter-drone ambitions as demand grows for systems capable of detecting and stopping unauthorized aircraft. The Lindon, Utah-based airspace security company has closed a $50 million Series B funding round led by Lockheed Martin. The round also includes Unusual Machines and other strategic and institutional investors.

DoorDash has spent the past few years bringing drone deliveries to customers through partners including Wing and Flytrex. Now, the delivery giant is taking a much bigger piece of the operation in-house, developing its own aircraft, ground infrastructure, and delivery software through its DoorDash Air program.

Britain’s electricity networks stretch for thousands of miles, connecting homes, businesses and renewable energy projects across the country. Keeping all that infrastructure in good shape is a huge inspection job, and increasingly, drones are doing more of the work.

There’s a big difference between recording a place and actually being able to revisit it. A regular photo freezes one view. A video gives you a moving perspective. But what if you could capture an entire room, studio, exhibition, or favorite travel spot and later move around inside it from different angles?

Drone delivery has spent years trying to answer a deceptively simple question: What happens when you want to move from a handful of pilot programs to thousands of deliveries every day? Matternet thinks the answer starts with taking people out of the loop.

Elroy Air is getting a much bigger financial runway as it prepares to turn its autonomous cargo drone into a production aircraft. The California-based company has expanded its previously announced private investment in public equity (PIPE) commitments to $175 million, with existing backers including Lockheed Martin Ventures and Inflection Point participating. So far, $75 million of that funding has been provided ahead of Elroy Air’s planned business combination with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. VII.

A drone can capture an entire crash scene or a packed event in seconds. Now, AI is getting better at telling crews what they’re looking at. SkyeBrowse has rolled out two new AI-powered workflows: Crush Analysis and Claims, designed for vehicle crash investigations and insurance work, and Crowd Counter, which can estimate the number of people visible in an aerial image. The latter is now available directly through the DJI RC Pro for enterprise drone operations.

Drone delivery has gotten pretty good at the flying part. The harder problem has often been getting a freshly prepared meal from the restaurant to the drone quickly enough. Flytrex is now trying to solve that bottleneck by putting the drones at the restaurant before the order comes in.

Skydio is making a pretty dramatic statement about where it thinks the drone industry is headed: not toward another pocket-sized camera drone, but toward fleets of autonomous flying machines that can respond to emergencies, inspect infrastructure, and patrol large properties with very little human intervention.

Imagine filming a sunset, a crowded city street, or a wild mountain trail without ever having to decide where to point your camera. That’s the appeal of a 360 camera: you capture the entire scene and worry about the framing later. DJI is now making that idea even more compelling with a new Osmo 360 II update that improves low-light video, cleans up close-range panoramic photos and, perhaps most usefully, makes it easier to send all those massive 360 files to the cloud.

Lowe’s is taking the “I need one more thing” problem to the sky. The home improvement retailer has launched a drone delivery pilot in Matthews, North Carolina, allowing eligible DIY customers and professionals to order a limited selection of tools, paint supplies, and household essentials through DoorDash and have them delivered by Wing drones in as little as 20 minutes. Lowe’s says it is the first home improvement retailer in the US to offer drone delivery.

What if a drone flight could do more than capture pretty aerial footage? DJI is asking drone operators around the world to put their aircraft to work documenting places that may not always look the same in the future. The company has launched its World Heritage 3D Conservation Initiative, a global competition that challenges drone operators to create 3D reconstructions of natural and cultural heritage sites and turn those models into flythrough videos.

If you thought your phone was the only thing relying on America’s cell towers, the FCC wants to test a very different possibility: drones could soon use those same commercial networks as part of the infrastructure keeping them connected and visible in the sky.

Drone delivery is moving beyond pilot projects in Zimbabwe, with local operator Drone Solutions International receiving regulatory approval to conduct beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) deliveries using Kite Aero’s KITE uncrewed aircraft system.

SkyeBrowse is giving its drone 3D modeling platform a new pricing structure, with three plans designed around how teams actually use their captured 3D models.

As drones move to become more integrated into the common unit, the US Marines share what that sort of training looks like both early on and in large scale exercises.