Haye Kesteloo is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at DroneDJ, where he covers all drone-related news and writes product reviews. He also contributes to the other sites in the 9to5Mac group such as; 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, and Electrek.
Haye can be reached at haye@dronedj.com or @hayekesteloo
Last year the Workhorse Group demonstrated their HorseFly drone delivery system for the first time. In April of this year, we reported that workhorse received a patent for their HorseFly truck-launched, drone delivery system. Now the company announces that their trail program will start in Loveland, Ohio. Packages delivered by drone, a scenario that once seemed like a long way off, is now rapidly becoming a reality.
Yesterday, the police in Orland Park, Illinois released video footage of their drone assisting officers to apprehend an armed fugitive. It was not the only time that the police used a drone to help them make an arrest.
Good morning, here are yesterday’s headlines with news about a drone with contraband, the Royal Wedding, and drone detection systems, No-Fly Zones around three military bases and a deal on a refurbished Yuneec drone. Lastly, we have a wonderful drone video of the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. Enjoy!
Time to update your DJI GO 4 app to version 4.2.16 for Android if you (or your phone) haven’t done so already. Now with added support for the DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 and added max flight speed control in ActiveTrack. Users can now switch between Velocity Priority and Obstacle Avoidance Priority modes for the Mavic Air.
Police have discovered a drone with a package containing contraband on the roof of an Ahuntsic elementary school in Montreal, Canada. The unmanned aerial device was found with a package containing marijuana, tobacco, cell phones, SIM cards, lighters and glue. The package was attached to the drone with a cord.
The Royal Wedding last weekend, represented one of the biggest security challenges so far this year. A special no-fly zone was created to protect members of the Royal family as well as the many celebrities that were present during the multiple events. DJI’s Aeroscope was almost certainly one of the drone detection systems in place to monitor the airspace for unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently added three new U.S. Defense Department facilities to the list of no-drone zones and extended the restricted boundary of a third facility. The additions are the result of a request to enhance unmanned aircraft flight restrictions over military bases in the US.
Good morning, last week we migrated our site to another server environment, which was quite an undertaking and we’re still not quite done, to be honest. the change benefits both you and us as the entire site should be a lot faster going forward. With that here are the headlines you may have missed as well as a very cool video of the George Washington Bridge. Enjoy!
ParaZero just announced a new “SafeAir” parachute system designed for the DJI Mavic Pro and Phantom series. The company already made parachute systems for larger drone models such as the Matrice 600 series but will now be launching similar systems for the smaller DJI drones. One benefit of this latest model is that the parachute is re-packable by the end-user and thus can be re-used. This system does not only work when you encounter a total malfunction of the drone and it comes falling out of the sky but it also when it detects excessive roll angle, in which case it will shut down the propellers before deploying itself.
Australian aviation authority, CASA launches a new campaign, that seems mostly aimed at children who might receive a drone as a present, to increase the awareness of the rules for new drone pilots. The campaign is called: “Rules apply when you fly!” and consists of a one-minute video animation that quickly explains the most important rules a drone pilot should be aware of.
A commercial drone pilot from Rhode Island was making $2,000 a day back in 2015. Now he only gets about $175 dollars per day for the same work. Ever since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) started to allow commercial drone flights the unmanned aerial devices have come down in price while at the same time their capabilities have improved and the competition has increased tremendously resulting in dramatically lower prices. Noticeably, the new competition is not only from other smaller players but increasingly from large companies such as General Electric, Intel Corp., Verizon Communications and other well-funded startups like PrecisionHawk and Airware.
This year about 1,790 students competed for almost $5 million in prizes from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. A 19-year-old student from Barker College in Sydney, Australia took home the top prize of $75,000 with a window cleaning drone.
Earlier today DJI posted a video on YouTube that shows you the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of the Amazon Prime Original series “You Are Wanted” and how DJI’s technology is used. The crew uses the DJI Inspire 2 drone with a Zenmuse X7 camera and the DJI Ronin 2 camera gimbal to achieve creative and surprising shots that otherwise would have been much more difficult to capture. The video is in German but if you activate the English subtitles it will be quite easy to follow.
Two Spanish YouTubers, called deDrones did just that. They set out to see if they could actually build a drone made of pizza and fly it. Without giving away the plot, you can imagine that it takes a special kind of pizza to be able to carry the weight of the battery, flight controller, camera, etc and deal with the forces that are created by the propellers during flight. Watch the short video below to see if the pizza-drone actually flies. Come to think of it, this is not the first time we covered an edible drone.
Most of our readers will be familiar with the Skydio R1 drone that flies fully autonomously. The R1 drone is quite large and packs 13 cameras and a lot of processing power in order to fly itself and avoid obstacles. Compare that to the Crazyflie 2.0 nano quadcopter that also flies autonomously but easily fits in the palm of your hand.
AeroVironment Inc. has been accused that it has been trying to conceal that employees brought a military drone loaded with explosives on board of a Delta flight and that the company retaliated against a whistleblowing manager.
Phase One is the first manufacturer to use the medium format 100-megapixel Sony backside-illuminated (BSI) 44x33mm sensor inside a dedicated drone camera, called the iXM 100MP. The company also announced four new RSM leaf-shutter lenses to accompany the iXM camera, two fixed-focus 35mm and 80mm lenses, and two motorized-focus 80mm and 150mm lenses.
Two hikers and an injured dog had lost their way after five hours hiking in New Mexico Otero Canyon. Not knowing how to get back, they called 911 and asked for help. When the firefighters had located the hikers and were escorting them back to safety, they lost their way as well. At that moment a first responder used his personal drone to lead the group back to base.
In recent weeks we’ve seen the Israel Defense Forces use drones in a variety of ways. The unmanned aerial devices have been used to shred ‘fire kites’ to pieces or to take them down with fish hooks and lines. We have also seen the Israeli Army use them to spray tear gas or to drop tear gas canisters on to crowds of protesting Palestinians. In an effort to avoid injuries among the protesters, the IDF has now come up with a new method, a drone that drops bags of skunk water to disperse crowds. The so-called Shoko drone.
Every spring, in what is one of the world’s largest migrations, thousands of great white sharks swim from along America’s West Coast to an area in the Pacific Ocean that is half-way in between San Diego and Hawaii. The area is about the size of Colorado and is known among marine biologists as the White Shark Cafe. Not much was known as to why the marine predators hang out here or what they are up to. However, this year we finally got some answers as two Saildrones were sent out there to monitor the great whites.
Drone footage by the Brazilian photographer Gabriel Chaim shows the utter devastation and destruction in the city of Taiz in Yemen. The city is at the forefront of a war between Iran-backed Houthi forces and Yemeni government forces supported by Saudi Arabia with US-equipped air power.
In March, we learned that Google has been working with the U.S. Military to use machine-learning to analyze drone footage. Since then many Google employees protested and almost 4,000 of them signed a letter requesting the company to stop the so-called “Project Maven” immediately. However, that hasn’t happened and now reportedly “about a dozen” employees have left the search giant.
The Chinese police are investigating a situation in which a Chinese toddler incurred facial injuries from an ‘out-of-control’ drone ‘flown by expat teen’. After the young boy was hit by the unmanned aerial vehicle, the drone pilot, a 14-year-old expat with blond hair according to eyewitnesses, grabbed the aircraft and fled the scene.