Scott Simmie

Chinese company EHang, one of the clear leaders of the pack when it comes to autonomous drones capable of carrying passengers or cargo, has announced another first: It has passed a technical evaluation of its EH216F AAV (Autonomous Aerial Vehicle), a drone built for firefighting.

An incident involving a drone and a commercial aircraft is being described as “serious” by Finnish Transport and Communications agency Traficom. It happened May 13 of this year, but the information has only been released in recent days.

If you keep an eye on the news, you may be aware that a transport jet recently went down off of Hawaii. The two pilots on board were injured but rescued. And now, a Remotely Operated Vehicle — the underwater equivalent of a drone — has been used to examine the site, which is too deep for all but the most specialized divers wearing pressure suits.

Don’t get too excited — this isn’t a drone most of our readers would ever be likely to purchase. But it does involve a pretty cool concept: a gas-powered onboard generator that creates electricity to run a drone.

Unfortunately, it’s wildfire season again in western Canada and parts of the US. Even more unfortunately, a drone has already gotten in the way at an active fire where crewed aircraft are deployed.

The recently released BETAFPV Pavo30 is the company’s first 3-inch pusher CineWhoop. We’ve got one in our hands but wanted to give you a preview until we can get out and fly the thing.

We’ve written before about the coming shift in aviation: a world where, we guess about five years from now, you might be able to order a passenger-carrying drone to pick you up and deliver you across a congested urban landscape. And now, at least potentially, you can add flying cars to the mix.

There’s no question that DJI holds the lion’s share of the drone market. There’s also no question that its products are really well-built and have a ton of top-notch engineering packed in. But we’ve got this nagging question: Why are all of its drone products based on the standard multi-rotor design?

We’ve been interested in Bentley’s software solutions for Enterprise drone operators for some time. So we thought it would be great to sit down virtually and learn more about what the company’s products do. We did that. And now we’re here to share some of what we’ve learned.

It’s a pretty interesting partnership, and it’s already been going on four years. Now, the United States Air Force and the Drone Racing League have announced they’re expanding the work they’re doing together, which is ultimately aimed at finding USAF recruits.

We’d been kicking this around for a bit. And we decided it was worth pursuing: A regular YouTube series, live-streamed, that addresses current news in the drone world. Get ready for some fun – and, hopefully – learning a little more about relevant topics.

DJI’s MINI SE has turned up on the FCC database, generally the final step before a product is released commercially. We believe the official release date is a little over a week away, on July 15.

There’s been an attack targeting US troops in Iraq. And it appears to have likely used modified Enterprise-style drones that were packed with explosives. Reports are still emerging, but it appears the device was brought down outside the walls of the airport compound.

Popping ‘The Question’ is one of those big moments in life. What will your planned partner say? Hopefully, yes, obviously. But how can you document the moment? This guy chose a drone.

Remember we told you recently about the new update to DJI FLY? We mentioned that it includes support for the new MINI SE (which appears to be the Mavic Mini with slight cosmetic changes). As a result, we have our hands on a bunch of new MINI SE images. Let’s have a look.

We’re pretty sure, by now, you’ve seen one of the amazing drone videos taken at the (very) active volcano that’s been drawing tourists just a short drive from Reykjavik. They’ve all been pretty great, but they’ve also been largely variations on a theme. This one is very different.

These videos have become as predictable as fireworks themselves: Drones, getting as close to the action as possible. Some flights are made with permission, some (most likely) are not.

It’s happened before… and, unfortunately, it’s happened again: People modifying drones to carry explosive charges and use the devices as weapons. This latest case (and they are thankfully very rare) happened in India, and new details are emerging.

Drone manufacturer Parrot has just announced a new drone. It has a number of interesting features, but the most compelling is its use of the 4G network – allowing it to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight flights wherever there’s a 4G cellular network.

DJI has released an updated version of its FLY app. And, as usual, there are some goodies in there that make it worth updating.

You’re likely familiar with Spot by now. That’s the robot/rover/drone developed by Boston Dynamics, a world leader in robotics. And the company has just released a pretty mind-blowing video to mark its recent majority acquisition by Hyundai Motor Group.