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Drone automation specialist FlytBase has announced its Black Friday 2021 deals. The company is offering discounts of up to 90% on annual subscriptions to remote drone operation and fleet management software FlytNow Live, which is recommended for the DJI Mavic 2 series.

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Amazon may have been teasing us with promises of aerial deliveries since 2013, but it’s retail giant Walmart that’s proving that being the first to announce a program doesn’t necessarily guarantee an industry leader spot. Teaming up with Virginia-based drone startup DroneUp, Walmart has begun commercial drone delivery services in northwestern Arkansas this week.

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If any proof was needed that Europe’s drone sector has matured to become a serious activity and business force, evidence of this was delivered this month with the birth of a giant lobbying body spanning the European Union and beyond.

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The government of Australia’s Victoria state says it is testing high-resolution sensors, artificial intelligence, and drones as part of what it’s calling a “regional road maintenance blitz” to renovate its aging ground transport network.

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Drone and technology company DJI has formed a partnership with conservation group AnimaMundi Ocean Data Solutions and catamaran manufacturer Lagoon to use drones aboard those boats in a project compiling the first comprehensive database of plastic waste along the world’s coastlines.

DJI will be supplying drones to Geneva-based nonprofit AnimaMundi as a tool for its data-driven approach to fully document and map the world’s plastics pollution scourge. Collection of the facts and figures in the enormous oceanic plastic trash problem will be used to define effective methods of battling the blight, and provide compelling evidence capable of generating the huge finances needed to reverse the rising tide of trash.

For its part, Lagoon is enlisting skippers sailing its craft in global catamaran races – as well as leisure owners belonging to its “Club Lagoon” community – to host the data-hunting drone flights from their vessels wherever they might travel.

“We have over 6,000 of our catamarans sailing around the world and we can feel that our customers are more and more willing to play a role in such initiatives,” explains Lagoon brand manager Thomas Gailly. “It’s stimulating to think that the Lagoon owners’ community could be involved in capturing this much needed data in a highly efficient way. This partnership is the perfect complement to our own policy of respect for the environment and all the work undertaken to reduce the environmental impact of our activities.”

AnimaMundi’s objective is at once simple and gigantic: using DJI drones in auditing the volume, and mapping to location of plastic waste in the world’s oceans.

At least 8 million of over 300 million tons of plastic produced every year wind up in the oceans, accounting for fully 80% of their debris. On average, 33,000 single-use plastic bottles are dumped into global seas each minute of the day, compounding the millions more already polluting marine life and environments. Yet despite precise information on the scope of that waste and how it gets into oceans, there is no global data documenting the exact size, location breakdown, and evolution of the problem. 

AnimaMundi, with the help of DJI drones and Lagoon catamaran hosts, wants to change that by using the full power of onboard next-generation artificial intelligence, computer vision, and object recognition technologies flown around coastlines. To do that, AnimaMundi has developed a software that automatically records, counts, and registers the presence and number of plastic bottles on and around shores examined in real time. That will be captured using images from the skies, which will then be autonomously uploaded, processed, and stored on AnimaMundi servers. 

As the project progresses and data continues flowing in from participating catamaran racers and leisure skippers, AnimaMundi will assemble a complete, data-defined picture of where plastic pollution is, and how it can best be removed from global waters. With that kind of precise information combined with effective proposals for attacking the problem, AnimaMundi founder and CEO Matt Cooper believes it may be easier to convince state and private financiers to provide the kind of big bucks required to overcome what today is a huge yet still mostly hazy challenge.

“Just before COP26 began, world leaders admitted that an annual $100 billion climate finance goal will not be reached until 2023,” Cooper says of the minimal amount needed to battle climate change and other pollution-driven environmental problems. “The need for urgent climate action is met with the need to ensure adequate and effective financing solutions. Big data like this will help to determine priorities for action.”

The AnimaMundi campaign kicked off on November 21 when DJI drones took off with catamarans leaving Las Palmas in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers race.

Photo: John Cameron

On-demand drone delivery service Flytrex has raised a $40 million Series C funding round to ramp up expansion throughout the US suburbs and advance partnerships with leading retailers and quick-service restaurants.

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DJI is celebrating the holiday season by offering its best drones, stabilizers, and cameras with free goodies, weekly product giveaways, and a chance to win the first DJI consumer product of 2022.

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Officials in the state of Western Australia are preparing what is becoming an annual deployment of drones to help farmers of wheat in one of the nation’s richest agricultural regions battle the nutrient-sucking plague of skeleton weed.

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The DJI FPV Drone Combo has dropped to $999, its biggest price cut ever, for Black Friday 2021. Meanwhile, some authorized retailers are throwing in a bunch of free accessories, such as a hard case, strobe light, and microSD card, to sweeten the deal even further.

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The city of Melbourne will be hosting what officials say will be the largest drone show ever in Australia – possibly in the Southern Hemisphere – among its list of New Year’s Eve events.

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The mystery surrounding the super drone that pursing police pilots in Tucson called “pretty freaking sophisticated” as it outran and outmaneuvered them last February remains near complete. But new reporting indicates that incident wasn’t the first time authorities in the region encountered the craft ­– or another souped-up UAV just like it.

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Integrated drone services company Volatus says it is teaming up with uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) producer Avidrone Aerospace to offer clients autonomous cargo drone delivery services in markets around the world.

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Cleo Robotics is announcing that its palm-fitting Dronut X1 drone, which is designed specifically for indoor operations, is now available to buy commercially. A ducted fan design gives the Dronut its unconventional looks and allows it to fly comfortably near people, in tight spaces, and around sensitive equipment.

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Police officials in the Pacific island nation of Fiji are fighting mad over a downed surveillance drone they say was put out of commission by a jamming device used by illegal pot farmers – not coincidentally because it was looking for signs of illegal pot farming.

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Water services companies that dominate the sector in France face a dilemma. A recent law requires all major cities to inspect their wastewater infrastructure by 2026, creating a crushing demand for operators of those thousands of kilometers of sewer networks to get the work done in time. In order to meet that challenge, sector giant Suez has turned to drones.

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On-demand residential drone delivery service Wing is bringing Christmas magic directly to Australia’s driveways and backyards this holiday season. Starting today, customers who live in Wing’s service areas in Canberra and Logan will be able to order a free “The Elf on the Shelf” plush toy and have it delivered to their home by a drone within minutes. And that’s not even the best part.

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Just over a year after the pair decided to explore drone delivery services together, retail giant Walmart and instant logistics specialist Zipline are launching those air drops of health and wellness products to customers in the area around Pea Ridge, Arkansas. 

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Insta360, arguably the world’s leading company specializing in consumer and pro 360° cameras and accessories, has announced its annual Black Friday sale. It will start November 24 at 6 a.m. PT, and it looks like a good one. We’ll ping you a reminder when it goes live, but you might want to bookmark or email yourself this article.

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Home to more than 1,400 unique and traditional holiday events spread across 40 days, Grapevine holds an official trademark for being the “Christmas Capital of Texas.” And this year, along with the sparkle of millions of lights, enormous decorations, and animated characters, the town is playing host to two Christmas-themed drone light shows.

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DJI has announced a major revamp to its developer ecosystem support policies. To make the development of third-party drone solutions on DJI’s platforms easier than ever before, the technology giant is reducing the cost of its SDK software and hardware kits, making all member services free of charge for SDK developers, and ramping up technical support dramatically.

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Iris Automation says its onboard Casia collision avoidance product for commercial drones has been selected for testing in Transport Canada’s Detect and Avoid trials next year.

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Drones have been useful in a lot of ways across the globe, but this one has to be pretty rare – or at least one hopes so. The municipality of Faa‘a in Tahiti is deploying a drone to conduct a mapping survey of occupied, free, and recuperable plots in order to find space solutions in its maxed-out cemetery.

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National flag carrier Korean Air has announced it is teaming up with Hyundai and three other South Korean partners to accelerate and strengthen preparations for urban aerial mobility (UAM) services in the country.

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