DroneDJ

Australia and its ever-booming economy are being hampered by its construction sector suffering from continued pandemic fallout, supply chain disruption, rising material prices, and a deepening shortage of skilled labor. As a remedy to that latter problem, a national education business is using drone technology in classroom-level instruction to encourage students to navigate those aerial assets into surveying careers.

As DroneDJ reported last month, Zipline will begin drone delivery in Japan by transporting medical supplies to Gotō Islands west of Kyūshū. Company official Okeoma Moronu now details the opportunities and considerable challenges of its new operation in Japan.

Though Pennsylvania startup AeroPest won’t be delivering its specialized wasp extermination drone tech to clients until later this year, the company is already beginning to adapt its patent-pending aerial spraying device to a number of non-lethal uses by other businesses as well.

Insta360 has just released a teaser for a new product. And, to say the least, it has us intrigued.

UK’s National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) is launching trials to fully automate the corrosion inspection of electricity transmission pylons with the help of autonomous drones.

Leading automated drone airplane inspection company Donecle says it has moved to enhance its operational capabilities with the acquisition of fellow French group Dronétix Technologie and its 3D mapping tech.

German delivery drone specialist Wingcopter has formed a partnership with an African UAV services company in an effort to create what is being called the world’s largest commercial and medical aerial logistics network, ultimately aiming to cover 49 nations on the continent.

News that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has changed its thinking on how it will certify electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for air taxi use has rattled developers of those vehicles – many prototypes of which are already well along in the approval process. In response to the jittery nerves that may have created, the regulator is assuring companies the alterations it has made won’t send any projects off the certification rails.

DJI, the world’s top drone maker, has suffered yet another leak. Actual photos of the DJI Avata FPV drone have surfaced online, fanning speculation that the rumored CineWhoop product may just see a summer launch.

Flyability, the Switzerland-based maker of the popular Elios range of drones for indoor and confined-space inspections, is ready with its next offering: Elios 3. It’s the world’s first collision-tolerant drone equipped with a LiDAR sensor for indoor 3D mapping.

Talk about beyond visual line of sight. Swoop Aero has won approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation and Safety Authority (CASA) to operate a centralized facility that will allow employees of the drone delivery company to remotely pilot up to five different UAVs over three different continents at once.

The bad news for Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery operation continues to pile up, most recently with a report claiming the company repeatedly stalled or otherwise impeded efforts by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to investigate crash incidents.

The DJI RS3, according to leakers, is the next product we expect the company will release this year. The first photo of DJI’s RS3 has surfaced, showing what looks to be a finished product.

A passenger aircraft approaching the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport (BER) last week was forced to maneuver to avoid a drone in its path, German news media is reporting. According to Brandenburg police, the drone in question was flying some 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) above the premises of Tesla Gigafactory Berlin which is located close to the airport.

Next-generation electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer Volocopter is teaming up with computing giant Microsoft to ready the operating system upon which its entire range of urban air mobility (UAM) activities will run.

The DJI Fly app has finally received an update a lot of us have been waiting for: The app now supports the new DJI Mini 3 Pro. At the same time, the Mini 3 Pro drone’s first firmware update is also being rolled out, unlocking features such as obstacle sensing and the full suite of intelligent shooting modes.

On Tuesday, a House subcommittee held a meeting discussing UFOs, as well as the potential national security threat they pose.

Colorado-based anti-drone tech specialist Liteye has won a $12.1 million contract from the US Department of Defense (DoD) to provide an array of platforms enabling multi-domain air and ground security missions both domestically and abroad.

Leading European maritime drone surveillance and data collection company TEKEVER has announced its partnership with global shipping giant Scorpio in an effort to accelerate deployment of UAVs for security and other operations above the seas.

US airspace security specialist Fortem Technologies says it has drawn from its range of anti-drone detection and neutralization systems to develop UAV defense platforms adapted specifically to the needs of Ukraine forces battling Russian invaders.

Commercial air taxi manufacturer Joby Aviation says its pre-production aircraft has met the “revolutionary low” noise targets the company had set for itself during acoustic testing with NASA. As per preliminary results, the all-electric air taxis should barely be perceptible in urban environments.

French energy giant TotalEnergies is launching a drone-based methane emissions detection program across all its upstream oil and gas operated sites. The global campaign will use a greenhouse gas measuring technology called Airborne Ultralight Spectrometer for Environmental Applications (AUSEA) that TotalEnergies has developed in collaboration with the French National Research Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Reims Champagne Ardenne.