Drones light shows are nothing new, we have seen them popping up at different events since Lady Gaga’s halftime performance at Super Bowl LI when synchronized drones took to the sky for a light show. The technology company behind these drone performances is Intel, and just the other day ABSA Bank rehearsed a small show above the Johannesburg skyline.
Matti Haapoja is a Canadian filmmaker who often uses drones in his videos to get different perspectives. DJI and other brands alike give you a platform through their drones to take smooth, high-resolution video, but getting good at flying them can be tough. These companies claim their drones are easy to fly, and while that’s true to a certain extent, there is a tremendous amount of skill involved in using drones effectively. Let’s get into Matti’s 5 tips on how to get better at flying!
With DJI releasing new drones every season, Spark owners might be wondering when their drone will get a refresh. Nobody knows what DJI has in the works for the next year, except for their employees obviously, but the likelihood of a new Spark drone coming out in 2018 seems very slim with the current set of drones DJI has for sale. Let me go into further detail to fully explain why I think DJI isn’t focused on bringing a new Spark to the market.
The use of drones commercially is skyrocketing around the globe with brand new ideas popping up in different countries. Companies like Matternet want to make peer-to-peer drone delivery common and Amazon wants to send your packages autonomously to your house via drones; but in the field of construction, drones are taking over by giving architects and builders crucial real-time data and 3D aerial maps from construction sites that was once expensive and difficult to obtain.
If you forgot about NASA after all of the noise SpaceX has made over the past months, yes, they still do exist and yes, they still do cool stuff! In a rover that is set to depart for Mars in 2020, a small drone has been developed to help the robot on its mission on the red planet. This is the first time that a flying drone has been developed for use on another planet and just like all of the other stuff launched into space, yes it has solar panels.
Just the other day we received the first leaked photo of the Mavic 2. While this highly anticipated drone was certainly the focus of the image, giving us great detail of what it will look like, there were also plenty of different items place around the table in the corners of the frame that are making people wonder. One of the biggest questions leading to speculation is the wheel-looking object in the top left corner. Today a DJI enthusiast notified us of a patent filed by DJI for a small robot with wheels that match the picture.
Finding the perfect spot to practice your drone flying is difficult, especially if you’re someone who lives in a densely populated area like Chicago. Flying around buildings is never the safest option, sometimes it’s even considered illegal, and even pesky trees can become annoying when learning to fly. The easiest drone flying is done in an open area where you can fly at fast speeds and not have to worry about obstacles, and the Park District in Naperville agrees as they have designated a park field for drone flights.
Two of the newest and most fascinating areas of technology are drones and 3D printers. Both of these fields offer high potential in the future as they can solve many of humanities current problems more efficiently. With this being said, what would happen if you combined the two? According to Euronews, researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK have shown us a concept of what this could look like as flying 3D printers repair damaged roads.
Early Friday morning, Yuneec released a new version of firmware for their H520 Hexacopter. Developed for commercial use, this drone gets a few new small features that might make a big difference in your daily flying routines.
There are nearly 15 million farmers in India who grow corn, which is considered to be the third most important crop, just behind wheat and rice. When you think of drones being used in agriculture, you probably assume it’s a huge octocopter flying just above the plants spraying either water or pesticides. Instead, companies like Skylark and Syngenta are using drones to collect real-time data about how to increase productivity and identify dying plants.
Harshwardhan Zala, a 15-year-old boy from the city of Ahmedabad in India, has a passion for saving lives across the globe. Zala has built drones that detect landmines and already has a handful of patents at his young age. The South Korean army has shown interest in his company, Areobotics7 Tech Solutions, and the technology he has invented.
With drones increasingly being adopted by military forces, efforts are being taken to stop them before soldiers on the ground can even see them. Putting a stop to drones is nothing new, we have seen guns capable of taking down UAV’s but the problem is their size, they are big and bulky. A new system called “Pitbull” is a wearable drone jammer that proves to be effective and lightweight.
Greenpeace, an independent global organization focused on conserving the environment and peace, flew a Superman-themed drone into the side of a French nuclear power plant located in Bugey. Their plan was to demonstrate the plant’s vulnerability to outside attacks such as a drone, piloted by one of their activists.
In Tony Northrup’s newest video, he “hopes” that you will buy a drone… but believes that most of you shouldn’t. He makes this claim for more reasons than one, stating that there are very few places to fly drones in the world and that the cost is too high for something that he claims is “disposable.” As major advocates of drones with a channel dedicated to their use, why would Tony and Chelsea make a video about not purchasing one? Let’s dissect their argument.
Chances are if you own a drone you have thought about filming your 4th of July fireworks from the air. While an aerial perspective would make quite a good video to look back on, the FAA reminded us last Saturday that drones and fireworks do not mix well together.
Skyguide and AirMap join forces to bring Europe’s first unmanned traffic system for drones to Switzerland. The so-called U-Space system has been deployed and tested since June 2018 and is expected to be fully operational by the summer of 2019. Regardless of the name (U-Space or UTM as we call it in the US) an automated drone traffic management system is considered a requirement to safely integrate unmanned air traffic on a large scale into the manned airspace and thus to allow services such as drone deliveries, inspections, and other services.
Career-criminal Redoine Faid escaped from Reau Prison located just south of Paris, France, with the help of a heavily armed team. This team arrived by helicopter and broke Faid out using brute force. Just months before his escape, drones were spotted flying above the prison which are now believed to be linked to the breakout.
Amazon’s vision of delivering packages to customers via drones is still in progress a new patent was filed by the e-commerce giant based out of Seattle. The biggest challenge they face is safety. With drones flying throughout the sky, autonomously, they need to prove that they are a safe means of delivering items to get the approval from the government and Federal Aviation Association (FAA).
NASA has contracted Black Swift Technologies out of Boulder, Colorado to design and manufacture an unmanned aerial vehicle to orbit Venus and collect data about its atmosphere. The project will last six months costing the government $125,000 which will cover the full cost of developing the drone.
With drones inevitably becoming more common on the battlefield, instructors at Fort Benning, Georgia have started a new school to give soldiers the knowledge on unmanned vehicles. As reported by Matthew Cox from Military.com, students of this new school will learn how to fly drones and how to deal with them in combat.
Everything in our lives is becoming “smart.” From the office to the kitchen, even to the bathroom, we are surrounded by devices connected to the internet. Voice assistants listen to our every word, waiting for commands like “Hey Siri” or “Ok Google.” Now, with the help of drones, Ohio is looking to make roadways smarter with their distinctive vantage point.
The race to who can make the best delivery drone system is in full effect as Matternet raises $16 million with the help of Boeing HorizonX Ventures. There are so many different ways drones can be used to deliver things like packages ordered from online retailers or medicine from a doctor, but Matternet plans to use its drones to deliver items from peer to peer.
Six months after I first got my hands on the Autel Evo at CES 2018, I finally got the opportunity to fly it. It’s not because I was busy flying other drones… but it’s because Autel took that long to bring their foldable drone and Mavic Pro competitor to the market. The official launch of the Evo was last Monday, June 25th and I am going to try and look past its rocky launch because the drone itself is really impressive. Here are some of my first impressions upon getting the drone out and spending some time flying it.
(Semi) autonomous drones are nothing new. DJI drones have countless (semi) autonomous flight features, applications like DroneDeploy turn your aircraft into a map-making slave, and large drones fly by themselves over fields tending to crops. Something new that has come about from researchers at the University of Zurich is a self-flying race drone capable of making agile flight maneuvers.
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