Merlin Labs CEO Matthew George is no fan of remote piloting. His eyes are set on the prize: to enable any aircraft to fly safely without a human on board. After all, no one wants a huge chunk of metal hurtling through the sky, as it would if the aircraft were to lose contact with a remote pilot.
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OK. We’ll admit that headline might not hook all of you. But with drone Fleet Management tools and autonomous deliveries, it’s a big issue for the industry – and it made for a fascinating panel discussion on the closing day of this year’s XPONENTIAL online conference.
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The mad geniuses at Exyn Technologies have broken the barriers of what is possible with drones in dark, dusty, and dangerous places where even GPS is not available. Exyn’s LiDAR drones are now capable of mapping and surveying complex underground mines on their own – without a pilot in the loop.
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A new collaboration between FlytBase and Chinese firm Heisha Tech will result in an affordable drone-in-a-box solution that will work with a variety of off-the-shelf products, according to a news release. The announcement says the solution will achieve greater return on investment, faster payback, and the ability to deploy automated systems at scale.
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HAPSMobile, the company behind the Sunglider, has entered into a new partnership with APB to develop new high-density polymer batteries. The partnership will allow for improved energy storage by replacing common battery components with more stored energy.
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Ikea is looking into using drones in its massive warehouses to improve efficiency, cut down costs, and transform its supply chain. Ikea has turned to the founders of Amazon Robotics to fully realize the benefits drones can bring to its warehouses worldwide.
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A new partnership between Stealth Technologies and Planck AeroSystems will see autonomous drones equipped to autonomous vehicles for military and security uses. The two will be used together to detect, track, and report on threats without the need for a human to be in the line of fire.
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Remember that video that was making the rounds? You know, the one with the chimpanzees flying the drone? Well, we debunked that one. Now, there’s a new video making the rounds. It shows a dog flying a drone. What???
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Drone autonomy company Emesent has made it into the final phase of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) SubT Challenge 2020, making it the only Australian team left. The Aussie team will be joined by Data61 and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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HAPS Mobile’s Sunglider has completed its latest test flight, where it entered the stratosphere and continued flying without any issues. The glider faced winds and extreme temperatures and flew for over 20 hours before coming back down.
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HAPS Mobile and Alphabet’s Loon has delivered the world’s first LTE connectivity from a fixed-wing autonomous glider during a recent test flight. The team even had a video call from the LTE connection to make sure it was working correctly.
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Azur Drones has announced that Alain Juillet, an intelligence exec and former economic adviser to the French prime minister, and defense specialist Daniel Rich as new members of its advisory board. Both will help guide the company through its next phase of growth.
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Two Cessna planes made history by taking off, flying, and landing without anyone on board, thanks to California startup Reliable Robotics. The flight of a Cessna 172 took place in airspace just outside of San Jose, California, in September 2019, and a Cessna 208 did the same in June of this year.
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Easy Aerial has raised $6.15 million in Series A funding allowing it to further its autonomous drone-based monitoring solutions. The company caters to the commercial, government, and military sectors.
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US drone maker Skydio hit back at DJI‘s Vice President of Policy & Legal Affairs, Brendan Schulman after he shared DJI’s latest video with Redbull, eventually calling it a ‘marketing gimmick’ that was generated by a computer.
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FIRST iZ has announced that it will be working with KnackForge to create control systems hardware and software for the company’s FIRST Port autonomous landing and take-off drone system. The partnership will allow the FIRST port system to be made safer and smarter.
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Over the years, Parrot and Dronisos have worked on various projects together, and today they announced they will be exploring drone automation with Parrot’s ANAFI drone platform. The two have previously created record-breaking light shows and drone dances.
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Australia-based Emesent has announced it has just achieved autonomy level 2 (AL2) for its Hovermap scanning unit. This allows the unit to be equipped to a drone and autonomously fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) and in GPS-denied environments.
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AirHub and Mapture.ai have partnered up to create a drone-in-a-box that can autonomously launch, land, and be controlled from a remote location. The solution means a skilled drone pilot is no longer required with all pre-flight checks being automated.
Researchers at Facebook and the University of California, Berkeley, published a new paper showing how a drone can use AI to learn to handle different delivery payloads under changing conditions. The work could come in handy as drones increasingly operate in tight spaces such as warehouses or industrial sites.
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UAV company UAVOS has managed to convert a Robinson R22 manned helicopter into an autonomous cargo drone, capable of flying over 1000km. The UVH R22 is capable of carrying 400 pounds of cargo, agricultural monitoring, and video surveillance, just to name a few.
FlytBase has teamed up with IAG Cargo to pilot autonomous drones usage in its Madrid-based warehouse. The pilot program is hoping to test and make any adjustments to the hardware and software before the program is rolled out to all of IAG Cargo’s warehouses, and possibly to the rest of the warehouses owned by IAG Cargo’s sister company, British Airways.
GET (Global Energy Transmission), a US C-corporation with an engineering center in Russia has developed an inductive charging system that powers up drone batteries mid-flight, allowing them to stay in the air for an indefinite amount of time. Although this appears to be in the early stages of development, it works really well delivering 25 minutes of flight in 6 minutes.
Any drone pilot knows that navigating through tight spaces is tough. Consumer grade drones developed by companies like Skydio and DJI now have the sensors and software that make it possible for their aircraft to dodge obstacles while following a subject, but the team behind the GapFlyt project is upping the ante.