Haye Kesteloo

During last week’s FAA Symposium in Baltimore, Amazon, Boeing, GE, and Google announced that they are ready to start working on the development of a private Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) system for drones. Testing in conjunction with NASA is supposed to start in the next three months. The system will enable swarms of drones to fly a couple of hundred feet above the ground using cellular and web applications to avoid collisions and allow for remote tracking.

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Good morning, Here are the headlines you may have missed. Also, as you may have noticed, the DJI Mavic Pro is being discounted at many different retailers. If you want to get into drones, the Mavic Pro is not a bad place to start at all. Also, the discounts may mean that the next generation is just around the corner. We can’t wait to see what DJI will have in store with the Mavic Pro II.

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During yesterday’s shareholder meeting, Walt Disney’s chairman and CEO Bob Iger showed this drone video to provide a visual impression of the massive expansion that is underway at both Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The drone video is from Disneyland’s version, which will open ahead of the Walt Disney World version, of the Star Wars themed amusement park. Both parks are expected to open in 2019.

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A deadly crash on Alligator Alley or I75 in Broward County, Florida was captured by a drone. The video shows the exact moment of impact when the pickup truck overtakes the passenger van and sideswipes it. The driver of the van loses control of the vehicle and both the van and the truck roll over several times in the grass median strip. The accident left a 21-year-old woman from Minnesota dead and 16 others injured, including children.

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Oakland University professor Jon Carroll, Ph.D., is bringing agricultural drone technology, that is widely used in the US to Africa. The anthropology professor traveled to Liwonde, Malawi to help farmers optimize their crop production by using drone technology and to promote sustainable agriculture in Africa.

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Good morning, today’s short film is all about perspectives and illusions. It was created by Tarsicio Sañudo and recorded in Mexico. Make sure you had your first cup of coffee otherwise, it may feel that you’re still dreaming. ;-)

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Last weekend during the NYC Drone Film Festival, I joined a session where children were writing code to program Parrot drones. The fact that the students got to fly the drones after they were done coding made all the difference. Those kids were stoked!

That’s also why this news got my attention. Recently Apple experts visited the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to show software that allowed students to write code without having to look at the screen and fly Parrot drones. One of the students, Demetria Ober knows now that being (partially) blind does not mean you cannot program or fly a drone for that matter!

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Ford is the third car manufacturer this week to make news in the drone industry. First, we had Porsche and Audi who both announced to be working on passenger or taxi-drones. Now it is Ford’s turn. As unlikely as it may seem the American car company was one of the panelists during the FAA Symposium in Baltimore. Apparently, Ford has been working with the FAA to create a remote tracking and identification system for drones, based on the anti-collision LED lights that you find on most unmanned aerial vehicles.

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DJI just released a new firmware update for the DJI Phantom 4 drone. Version:V 01.05.0600

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Good morning. It has been a bit of a busy week so I had some catching up to do. My apologies. With that out of the way, here are the headlines from the last few day. Grab a cup of coffee and follow along.

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Authorities say that a drone crash sparked a wildfire northwest of Flagstaff, Ariz. More than 300 acres were burned before the fire was contained late Tuesday afternoon. Visibility was limited as a result of the smoke produced by the burning grasslands.

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These photos are some of the best drone-based art, we have come across in a while. Photographer Reuben Wu has been using drones with LED lights attached to them to light landscapes at night. Also referred to as light painting. In these photos he added another element, a drone create halo effect over the rock pinnacles. as you can see in the photos the result is amazing!

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According to a Federal Aviation Administration official at the FAA Symposium, there are 10 times more drones registered in the US than manned aircraft. And, as we know, so many unmanned aerial vehicles in the hands of consumers has led to many drone incidents as well. Federal officials are urgently looking to mitigate the risk of drones in the hands of “the clueless, the careless, and the criminals” by introducing drone identification and new powers for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to track, disrupt and bring down unmanned aerial vehicles that pose a threat to security.

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The Pakistani army claims to have shot down a spy drone from India. The unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down in the village of Chirikot in the Kashmir region along the contested border, also known as the ‘Line of Control’. The Pakistani army has retrieved the wreckage. India has not yet issued an official statement.

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The FAA’s Acting Administrator, Dan Elwell, announced during the FAA Symposium last week that the tests of the automated Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) system will be expanded. This is an important step towards an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management System (UTM).

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In a press release, we learn that leading airspace intelligence platform Airmap will partner with Skyguide, a Swiss air navigation provider to create Europe’s first National drone traffic management system. The Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) system, also known as U-space, will be first launched in Switzerland.

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A group of researchers has discovered one of the largest colonies of Adélie penguins on the Danger Islands of Antarctica. This ‘super-colony’ is believed to consist out of 751,527 breeding pairs of Adélie penguins. How would one count such a large group of animals? Well, with the help of drones and neural network software.

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The UK’s National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) is planning to scrap the rule that prevents drone pilots to fly their unmanned aerial vehicles beyond line-of-sight. This would open up the opportunity for companies like Amazon to start making deliveries by drone to customers as early as 2019.

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We got our hands on two pairs of DJI Goggles Racing Edition, so we thought what better way to put these First Person View (FPV) Goggles to the test than to take them to the Lime Rock Park Racetrack and fly the DJI Mavic Air against the DJI Mavic Pro over the track and through the turns!

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Sports car manufacturer Porsche is working on an ‘Airtaxi’ or drone taxi and concept drawings may soon be released according to a report from the German automotive website Automobilwoche [paywall]. News that apparently has been confirmed by the car manufacturer and a sales director from Porsche saying that he wouldn’t be surprised.

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The Tello drone from Ryze Robotics that we first reported about in January is now for sale at DJI.com. The toy-drone was developed in partnership with DJI and Intel and promises to be the best $99 drone on the market, without the controller.

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