Bruce Crumley

The killer whale whose deteriorating health in the fresh waters of the Seine River led officials in Normandy to deploy a drone in their efforts to lure it back to sea. The whale has been euthanized after it was determined the creature’s state had declined too greatly to survive.

Officials in France’s Normandy region are to deploy a drone as likely their best and probably last chance to save a killer whale that has strayed far up into the fresh waters of the Seine River.

Pursuing a similar strategy it introduced in the US, vertiport infrastructure specialist Skyports is teaming up with Japan’s largest parking lot and car sharing operator, PARK24 CO., to adapt existing structures as hosts of future air taxi and other advance air mobility (AAM) services.

California startup Realtime Robotics is introducing a portable, relatively heavy-lift drone called Hera that the company says beats rivals as a situational awareness asset for first responders, as well as a munitions delivery device for security and defense forces. As such it also sounds like something likely to find numerous takers in Ukraine just now.

Developer of electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxis Joby Aviation says it has obtained its Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate nearly a half year ahead of schedule. The company will now use the permit to operate traditional aircraft to prepare the launch of services with next-generation vehicles in 2024.

Auterion, the company providing enterprise and government clients open-source software-defined systems for drones, payloads, and apps, has introduced its AI Node designed to infuse supercomputing power to the company’s Skynode avionics product.

Leading drone show conceptualization and performing company, SKYMAGIC, will be at work this Sunday for the return of the Vivid Sydney creative festival, where a record 600 UAVs will light up the sky in a choreographed spectacle.

Having a drone in flight to video first-person view footage of football hero Tom Brady’s against-the-odds hole-in-one golf shot seems too serendipitous to be real. And that’s because it is – not real, that is – according to about half of the online viewers now panning it as a fraud.

Bulgaria’s Dronamics has taken a major step toward its goal of launching middle-mile automated drone delivery service later this year by obtaining what it says is the first operational certificate by a UAV airline for activity across the European Union (EU).

People involved in an effort to procure over 200 Parrot Anafi USA drones for Ukraine forces battling Russian troops fear they’ve been bilked by intermediaries in Poland who delivered only six of the UAVs, and have failed to return over half a million dollars after the order was canceled.

Drone services and urban air mobility (UAM) vertiport specialist Skyports has signed an agreement with the operators of Singapore’s Jurong Port – the only facility in the city-state serving as a multi-purpose cargo platform – to oversee development of infrastructure for planned ship-to-shore UAV deliveries.

Retailing giant Walmart is shifting its aerial partnership with DroneUp into higher gear with its announcement today of expanded drone delivery services to a potential of 4 million households across six US states.

Australia and its ever-booming economy are being hampered by its construction sector suffering from continued pandemic fallout, supply chain disruption, rising material prices, and a deepening shortage of skilled labor. As a remedy to that latter problem, a national education business is using drone technology in classroom-level instruction to encourage students to navigate those aerial assets into surveying careers.

As DroneDJ reported last month, Zipline will begin drone delivery in Japan by transporting medical supplies to Gotō Islands west of Kyūshū. Company official Okeoma Moronu now details the opportunities and considerable challenges of its new operation in Japan.

Though Pennsylvania startup AeroPest won’t be delivering its specialized wasp extermination drone tech to clients until later this year, the company is already beginning to adapt its patent-pending aerial spraying device to a number of non-lethal uses by other businesses as well.

Leading automated drone airplane inspection company Donecle says it has moved to enhance its operational capabilities with the acquisition of fellow French group Dronétix Technologie and its 3D mapping tech.

German delivery drone specialist Wingcopter has formed a partnership with an African UAV services company in an effort to create what is being called the world’s largest commercial and medical aerial logistics network, ultimately aiming to cover 49 nations on the continent.

News that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has changed its thinking on how it will certify electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for air taxi use has rattled developers of those vehicles – many prototypes of which are already well along in the approval process. In response to the jittery nerves that may have created, the regulator is assuring companies the alterations it has made won’t send any projects off the certification rails.

Talk about beyond visual line of sight. Swoop Aero has won approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation and Safety Authority (CASA) to operate a centralized facility that will allow employees of the drone delivery company to remotely pilot up to five different UAVs over three different continents at once.

The bad news for Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery operation continues to pile up, most recently with a report claiming the company repeatedly stalled or otherwise impeded efforts by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to investigate crash incidents.

Next-generation electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer Volocopter is teaming up with computing giant Microsoft to ready the operating system upon which its entire range of urban air mobility (UAM) activities will run.