Sean Captain

Economies around the world are imploding due to the shut-down of businesses in the COVID-19 era. But even in downtimes, there are winners—companies that provide the right products or services for the needs at hand. In the era of social distancing, drones are emerging as a no-contact solution for many jobs.
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PowerVision definitely has its own take on drones. Its new PowerEgg X looks like, well, an egg. It can be a standalone smart camera or be outfitted with quadcopter rotors to fly like a standard drone. We’ve had our eye on this curiosity for a while, and it’s now available for purchase, at $899.
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The dark age of the coronavirus is shaping up to be a golden age of drone innovation. We’re seeing a boon in delivery drones, for instance, as well as a new class of diagnostic drones. The latest comes from students at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University: A drone that can a hear a COVID-19 cough.
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If anyone knows the name “Draganfly,” it may be from an unfortunate news story from last week. The Canadian company’s plan to test a coronavirus-monitoring “pandemic drone” in Westport, Connecticut, came to a halt when anxious citizens and civil rights advocates got wind of it.
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Ireland’s Manna Aero had a plan—to deliver fast food by drone. And it was about to start a trial for college students in March when the coronavirus hit–one of so many plans changed by the pandemic. Now it’s pivoted to a new role as a delivery service for pharmacies.
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Drones are often called “flying cameras,” and many drone operators consider themselves to be photographers. Now an arbitrator in a Hollywood labor dispute has agreed, granting drone photographers on a TV show the same rights as other photography professionals.

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The skies over Philadelphia lit up earlier this week in an aerial show composed of about 140 brightly lit drones. The drone light show was a tribute to health workers on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Always be wary when you see two technology buzzwords in one sentence. But the US Department of Transportation (DOT) makes some interesting cases for why the secure ledger tech of blockchain could help make drones safer and more accountable.
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After a very slow start in recent years, the drone delivery business is taking off in 2020. The latest news comes from Singapore, which just got its first drone delivery service. This one is unique because it’s entirely over water.
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Photography often takes us places we can’t go ourselves. And drone photography takes us even farther than most cameras can. So are we able to get this amazing drone video surveying new excavations in the ancient city of Pompeii.
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The PBS Nature series Spy in the Wild is capturing some amazing closeups of wildlife as you’ve never seen it before. For an upcoming episode, it used a drone disguised as a hummingbird to film a 500-million butterfly swarm in Mexico.
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The COVID-19 lock-ins have been an opportunity to see our cities in a new light—devoid of the usual crowds. In some ways, this can be a somber experience, seeing the once-bustling streets and plaza’s deserted. But it also helps focus attention on the design of some of our most impressive cities.
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One of the oddest but coolest aspects of the recent CBS show Star Trek Picard is the hand gestures. Cristóbal Rios, the captain of a starship that Picard hires out for his mission, is able to direct the ship just by moving his hand in the air. Now researchers at MIT have come out with a crude version of this system that uses sensors to control drones and other robots.

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DJI’s new flagship consumer drone is officially here. Rumors and leaks have given us interesting pieces of the Mavic Air 2 story. But with the official product launch, we now have the full picture of what DJI calls its “smartest” ($799 DJI Store) consumer drone.
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Another day, another story of new drone delivery services spurred by the COVID-19 emergency. Today, Bloomberg Law reports that UPS will begin its first paid residential drone delivery service, catering to The Villages retirement community in Florida.
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And now for a break from aerial videos of deserted cities. Recently two beautiful drone videos emerged online that show off the geographic and cultural diversity of Greece.
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With a population of over 140,000, the Isle of Wight is a small island in the English Channel. It relies on ferry service for its connection to the rest of the UK, and those ferries have been cut back during the COVID-19 pandemic. Soon drones may soon help fill the gap.
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There’s ever less surprise to expect for DJI’s Mavic Air 2 unveiling on April 27th. We’ve already seen many leaked photos of the drone from various angles. Now we also have high-res shots of the new Mavic Air 2 controller, confirming many indications we’d gotten from earlier leaks.

(Update: Buy at DJI or Adorama/$988 Fly More)
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Much of the world is on lockdown, shut in to avoid the human contact that spreads the new coronavirus. Emerging from lockdown will be a gradual process and experts say it’s only possible with thorough testing to identify and quarantine cases as they pop up. A new study says that drones can be a key part of this plan.
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The Chernobyl nuclear power plant complex in Ukraine remains one of the most dangerous places on earth, 34 years after the fire that released massive amounts of radiation. In early April, wildfires threatened to cross into the exclusion zone, stirring up the radioactive remnants of the site.
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Before the COVID-19 era, drone delivery services were almost as rare as unicorns. There were believers, but not a lot of sightings. That’s changing quickly as the need for social distancing is inspiring ever more test programs.
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