Bruce Crumley

The Dallas Police Department is under intense scrutiny after a security breach allowed over 600 hours of aerial surveillance video to be published on a privacy activist website – footage from helicopters that quickly led many suspicious observers turn their gazes toward drones.

The New York City Fire Department is looking into the possibilities of using drones as a faster option to deliver blood supplies to accident sites than traditional road transportation.

Don’t chuck your trusty controller out just yet, but a UK tech company says it has developed a prototype system for piloting drones with the human brain.

Seeking to turn back an increasing number of restricted airspace violations by drones, Australia’s civil aviation administration has more than doubled the number of UAV safety apps it has authorized to inform pilots about no-fly zones around them.

South Korean transportation giant Hyundai has announced the creation of an advanced air mobility (AAM) company, Supernal LLC. The company will pursue the development of next-generation passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, and aims to conduct its first commercial flight in 2028.

UK-based unified traffic management (UTM) technology provider Altitude Angel has announced it is joining Hyundai Motor Group’s Airspace Management Consortium, an initiative to help develop and accelerate advanced air mobility (AAM) operations.

Researchers say submarine drone videos have provided evidence of what they believe are fish using the skin of passing sharks as back-scratchers for exfoliating dead scales and parasites. Just as oddly, the different incarnations of sharks filmed seemed just fine in assuming the role of piscine loofa foam.

Lost amid the dramatic push for – and final securing of – passage of President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure draft law last week was the vote approving of another bill designed to have far-reaching consequences for the country: the Advanced Air Mobility Coordination and Leadership Act.

Authorities in the eastern Australian city of Gold Coast are warning of a rising number of drone flights in restricted airspace – particularly around its airport – and have made a plea to the region’s pilots to respect no-go delineations as the nation heads into summer.

A new FPV one-shot video by self-described “camera-drone services” company DroneBoy Cinema starts with a credibility-testing scene ­– Canadians being impolite to one another – and gets increasingly unbelievable from there, thanks to some truly astonishing piloting skills.

Forget sophisticated ransomware attacks that have shut down businesses, administrations, pipelines, and utilities in recent months. Now the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is saying a drone that crashed near a Pennsylvania power facility last year was probably on a kamikaze mission to cut electricity supplies.

Nicholas Rehm may be a full-time aerospace engineer, but his success in constructing a DIY self-flying drone that avoids obstacles without standard GPS tech aboard still merits a standing-O. He also gets a deep bow for describing the serious wonkitude involved in a thoroughly entertaining way.

Drones for good is getting a research and analysis lift from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which is teaming up with the nonprofit Airborne International Response Team (AIRT) to find ways to improve UAV deployment in emergency and rescue situations.

A drone pilot in southern Ireland has captured a video of what he calls the “ghostly” remnants of the Cork to Macroom rail line making a rare appearance from beneath the murky waters that have entombed it for over half a century.

Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. That, in a nutshell, is the advice of experts whose new report urges the UK government to make some necessary investment and regulatory moves in UAV activity today in order to avoid missing out on the economic bounties that drone activity of tomorrow will bring.

(Correction, November 16: this story has been corrected to reflect the application acceptance, not initial granting of type certification application; and fix the name of the SD-05 craft involved.)

Japan’s advanced air mobility (AAM) company SkyDrive announced its application for type certification of its two seat flying car was accepted by Japanese authorities, the first craft of its kind to reach that milestone in the country according to the company

Given the recurring and emotionally charged accusations of video-packing drones violating personal privacy – both perceived and actual – does the seriously upgraded zoom capabilities of DJI’s Mavic 3 risk elevating the ongoing Peeping Tom debates to even higher levels?

A Scottish drone pilot got more than he expected during a coastal flight on Halloween, when his craft videoed a mysteriously boiling area of sea water resembling a giant witches’ cauldron.

The practice of flying drones to live-stream UK horse races – and thereby giving viewers betting on the outcomes an advantage – has come to a head again, with pilots battling parimutuel, track, and legal officials seeking to shut the profitable activity down.

Researchers in Japan are testing whether the deployment of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) for research can be significantly enhanced by pairing them with communication-linked UAVs hovering overhead to relay data to human monitors on the ground.

The UK’s leading electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft producer, Vertical Aerospace, has struck a deal with London’s Heathrow Airport to examine integration and use of its craft at Europe’s biggest passenger air platform.