Engineers from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab built a three-inch drone that could be launched from a barrel. It’s called SQUID, or the Streamlined Quick Unfolding Investigation Drone. And this year, the team has debuted a larger six-inch version of the drone.
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The US Army’s research lab has come up with a new drone sensor that is capable of detecting and avoiding live power lines nearby. Power lines are notorious for being undetected by autonomous drones.
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Engineers from around the world have created a four-winged drone that flaps similarly to a bird. The creation goes by the name of Ornithopters, meaning it’s based on the design of birds rather than using the more traditional motors and propellers.
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Researchers have shared data suggesting drones and artificial intelligence (AI) could save the declining population of farmland birds. The drones use thermal cameras to detect the bird nests for later analysis by an AI system.
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Engineers at Caltech have successfully designed a new method to control the movement of drones within a swarm to stop them from flying into one another. The new method relies on data to control the movement of the drones through cluttered unmapped spaces.
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Researchers at the University of Hong Kong have built a drone capable of seeking out gemstone deposits and fossils at night using a laser. The drone uses a scanning laser to react with fluorescents in the various objects that can later be detected in processing.
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Researchers from MIT, Texas A&M University, and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid have managed to create a relatively low-cost and effective method for drones to detect and avoid obstacles in flight using stereo cameras to build a depth map of the world around it in real-time.
Researchers recently used a drone to collect data in a pilot study, specifically height and width, on a school of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Maine. The drone was used to take photos of the school of tuna and individual tuna to test whether usable data could be collected.
Volcanos are most interesting when they are most active. But that’s also when they are most dangerous. Now volcanologists are using drones to get close-up views of volcanos without putting themselves at risk.
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Drones are nimble and fast-moving—sometimes too fast for the obstacles they encounter. There has been a trend of adding more and more collision sensors to drones to help them sense and avoid obstacles. But sensors cost money and consume power and space.
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Researchers from Edinburgh University have started to use drones to capture an aerial view of some of the highest glaciers in South America. Rosie Bisset is part of a project to map out the Andes glaciers that are shrinking because of global warming despite their high altitude.
As the industry for self-driving cars, robots and other unmanned vehicles quickly evolves — and engineers work to overcome the limitations of sensors that use visual, infrared or thermal information — math experts at Purdue University and the Technical University of Munich have proven there’s another, equally viable solution: using sound.
Researchers from Brown University developed a new wing design for small drones that’s inspired by the wings of birds and insects. The new wing allows small drones to fly more efficiently and makes them more “robust to atmospheric turbulence.”
Research with drones shows that Northwest killer whales are shrinking in size. Drone photos show how closely the health and size of the killer whales are related to the size of their favorite prey, big chinook salmon.
On Monday, scientists said that they had used a drone to observe an ice sheet in Greenland fracturing in real time. A team of researchers witnessed the rapid fracturing and draining of a lake on the ice sheet.
It is expected that this phenomenon may become more frequent as climate change worsens. Greenland’s ice sheet is the second largest in the world, and the single largest contributor to global sea-level rise.
A team of researchers from Montana State University’s College of Agriculture brought drones to examine climate trends to Fairbanks, Alaska. The research group will use data from the drones in combination with ground measurements and data from other sources to improve their understanding of how the climate might be changing.
Photo: Researchers from the Montana State University Land Resources Environmental Sciences department recently traveled to Alaska to collect data on thawing permafrost soils in boreal and arctic regions. Courtesy of MSU News Service.
Measuring the growth of a Brazilian Rainforest can be a big challenge, however, an international team of researchers uses lidar-equipped drones as low-cost data collectors to monitor the forest restoration. The researchers have developed a drone that is equipped with three-dimensional laser scanning and hyperspectral imaging systems and that is capable of producing high-resolution maps and collecting hundreds of images at different wavelengths for any given area. With the drones, larger areas of the forest can be observed more efficiently than was previously done with researchers on the ground. The unmanned aircraft also have an advantage over lidar-equipped airplanes, which are more expensive to run and more complicated to organize.
You can find more articles about drones being used for research here.
College students of New Mexico use drones to map the location of dinosaur tracks in a state park. In a recent statement, New Mexico State Parks announced it is teaming up with Central New Mexico Community College students and the New Mexico Museum of National History and Science to map the footprints of dinosaurs at Clayton Lake State Park.
The FlyCroTugs, Developed in the labs of Mark Cutkosky, the Fletcher Jones Chair in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, and Dario Floreano at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, are small drones that can pull 40 times their own weight. The name derives from Flying MiCro Tugging and the small unmanned aircraft are inspired by wasps and geckos. Wasps can drag much larger prey away by using a special structure on their feet called an arolium. It helps them to get grip on a surface. Geckos have a similar ability to find grip on very smooth surfaces although they use a different technique. The FlyCroTugs drones took inspiration from both the wasps and geckos and it allows them to drag items that are far too heavy to carry. If a task is too big for a single drone, FlyCroTugs can team up and achieve extraordinary results, such as opening a door. See the video below.
Tests performed at the University of Dayton Research Institute’s Impact Physics Lab show that even the impact of a small drone, like a DJI Phantom can have severe consequences. The tests were designed to mimic a midair collision at 238 mph. A 2.1-pound DJI Phantom 2 drone was launched into the wing of a Mooney M20 aircraft. As you can see in the video below, the drone did not shatter upon impact but tore open the leading edge of the wing. It entered the wing’s structure and damaged the main spar, posing a risk to manned aircraft.
10/8/18: The article was updated with a longer version video about the test.
We reported briefly on Ocean Alliance before, but this video that the non-profit organization provided us with is simply too good not to be shared. The drone footage of the whales is amazing and also the innovative way these researchers have been able to use drones, is a great example of how these unmanned aircraft can be used for good in the world. DJI has acknowledged this as well and is an official partner for the not-for-profit. The organization uses an Inspire drone, called the SnotBot to capture the droplets with DNA as the whales exhale by flying the drone through the spray. Fascinating stuff!
Harshwardhan Zala, a 15-year-old boy from the city of Ahmedabad in India, has a passion for saving lives across the globe. Zala has built drones that detect landmines and already has a handful of patents at his young age. The South Korean army has shown interest in his company, Areobotics7 Tech Solutions, and the technology he has invented.
Every spring, in what is one of the world’s largest migrations, thousands of great white sharks swim from along America’s West Coast to an area in the Pacific Ocean that is half-way in between San Diego and Hawaii. The area is about the size of Colorado and is known among marine biologists as the White Shark Cafe. Not much was known as to why the marine predators hang out here or what they are up to. However, this year we finally got some answers as two Saildrones were sent out there to monitor the great whites.
Drones are being used to monitor deforestation and to track malaria-carrying macaque monkeys deep in the Malaysian forests. Especially in Borneo, there has been a surge in the deadly ‘monkey malaria’, with the disease accounting for 69% of all the human malaria cases in Malaysia. With the help of drones outfitted with infrared cameras, researchers of the Monkey Bar Project are able to better track the monkeys through the forest and ultimately slow down the spreading of the disease.
