automation

Swiss warehouse and logistics drone services company Verity has gotten a boost in its international scaling ambitions with a new financial infusion increasing its earlier $32 million Series B funding round by nearly 30%.

Automated drone company Flyby has announced a pair of significant developments in its business expansion plans, with a launch of aerial food delivery activities coinciding with a $4 million infusion of seed financing.

Swiss drone company Verity, which specializes in UAV operation in automated warehouse management and inventory services, has raised 30 million Swiss francs ($32 million) in a Series B fundraising round largely underwritten by A.P. Moller Holding – the parent company and venture capital arm of shipping giant Maersk, which began using the aerial logistics management solution a few months ago.

Global shipping, ground transport, and logistics giant Maersk is tackling the problem of getting accurate, continually updated data from its warehouse inventories by swapping one of the weak links in that process – the easily distracted attention of humans – with the laser-focused, unperturbable eyes of automated drones.

Cargo drone developer Elroy Air says it has secured the purchase at least 20 of its Chaparral autonomous planes from aircraft and helicopter leasing company LCI, raising the total value of its order book to over $2 billion, according to the company.

Japan Post, the archipelago nation’s mail company, has jumped on the easing of certain drone restrictions introduced only last week to announce its plans to prepare for aerial delivery of parcels starting next year.

If a single person were to be designed the “Drone Meister” of US government aerial operations, it might well be Mark Bathrick – the recently retired director of the Department of the Interior’s Office of Aviation Services (OAS), who assembled and oversaw the increasingly diversified use of the world’s largest fleet of non-military UAS. Creator of the agency’s “Drones for Good” program, Bathrick spoke to DroneDJ about how those operations evolved over the past two decades and how it’s likely to continue in the future.

American Robotics CEO Reese Mozer has no beef with drone deliveries, but he thinks all the hoopla surrounding aerial transport of burgers and burritos is drowning out news about farther-reaching UAV activities that are dramatically changing the way businesses operate. He tells DroneDJ about that transformative innovation, and how American Robotics’s (AR) leading role in the complete automation of critical drone services to industry is set to take wing.

Scientists estimate some 500 meteorites plummet to Earth every year, yet less than 2% of those bodies from space are ever located – usually the larger chunks. Now researchers are seeking to up that count with drones using with artificial intelligence (AI) to distinguish meteorite fragments from regular rocks.

The world’s leading drone delivery specialist, Zipline, has announced a capital infusion of $250 million, which it will use to expand its booming activities in Africa and the US. The investment increases the total funds Zipline has raised to $486 million, and values the instant logistics company at $2.75 billion.

A group of visionary students has devised a system to improve the way urban centers monitor air pollution levels. Their plan calls for fleets of automated drones to patrol sections of city skies, communicate their sample readings in real-time, then return to their docks to recharge for the next flight. 

There are drone catchers and then there is Tular – a patented device that can launch and recover drones from any moving vehicle autonomously. And it can do that at speeds of over 65 mph, even during windy conditions! Ready for a deeper look? Let’s go…

The UK government is backing what it calls the world’s first remotely operated offshore search-and-rescue operation as part of a wider $10 million funding project to boost robotic and automation development.