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Despite recurring announcements with significant fanfare at various stages of the service’s very long awaited rollout, it appears Amazon drones aren’t actually delivering much – or often ­­– in the two communities where they were finally put into operation last December.

Canada’s Indro Robotics, a leader in drone and ground UAV research and user training, says it is teaming up with next-generation vehicle trial center Area X.O to offer new test facilities for uncrewed tech, featuring a range of exacting courses particularly useful to police and other first-responder aerial units.

Japan’s electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) developer, SkyDrive, is looking beyond the planned debut of its SD-05 “flying car” at the 2025 World Expo in Osaka by establishing a base in South Carolina as its operational foothold for future business in the US.

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.

Israeli Police have successfully conducted a trial where drones served as first responders to incidents in two suburbs of Tel Aviv with a combined population of around 154,000 residents.

Czech UAV tech company Dronetag is starting 2023 with the rollout of its new Direct Remote ID (DRI) product, designed as an ultra-small internal component for incorporation by drone manufacturers around the world.

A new drone flight advisory service is now available for pilots in Australia, and it’s free for all users.

UK telecoms company BT is testing a powerful new antenna technology that, once mounted on a high-altitude platform station (HAPS) drone, is expected to provide 4G and 5G services of up to 150 Mbps over areas as large as 15,000 square kilometers.

Proposed legislation in Arkansas that would legally ban certain registered sex offenders from owning or operating a drone took another step toward passage this week, when the Senate Committee on Judiciary approved the bill in a five to one vote.

Surging Canadian drone, software, systems, and artificial intelligence company Draganfly has announced a manufacturing and distribution partnership with Hyderabad-based geospatial technological company Remote Sensing Instruments (RSI), designed to provide it access to the expanding, but also protected UAV market in India.

Officials from the island of Jersey have briefed authorities on neighboring Guernsey about potential implications that looming drone trials are expected to eventually have for daily life and activity on both English Channel territories.

Ukraine is doubling down on its deployment of drones in its efforts to oust invading Russian forces, pledging nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of spending for the production and procurement of UAVs – many to be made by domestic companies.

SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest wireless telecom operator that is now rapidly transforming into an AI company, says that it has developed an inspection system that checks the safety of cell towers using drones and automated image analysis.

One-click reality capture platform SkyeBrowse has launched a new situational awareness tool that allows for real-time tracking of team members within a drone 3D model. In other words, you create a 2D or 3D model of an area in less than five minutes using a single drone video, and participating members can plot their GPS coordinates onto that model in real time.

The drone services division of UK delivery and vertiport company Skyports has announced it will be integrating the heavy payload electric vertical takeoff and landing UAVs by manufacturer Pyka into its fleet, thereby considerably expanding the goods its craft can haul in a single flight.

Drone delivery company Flytrex will soon be moving to expand its South Carolina and Texas operations across other US states, after it received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 Certification to offer unscheduled, on-demand aerial services through its longtime partner, Causey Aviation Unmanned (CAU).

Though much attention has rightfully been turned to the remarkably effective ways soldiers and citizens alike have used consumer and enterprise drones in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, less notice has been made of the increasingly potent manner fighters in Myanmar have also been using UAVs to battle the armed forces of the nation’s repressive military junta.

Skydio aircraft have finally made it to the FAA website tracking drone manufacturer compliance with the new Remote ID rule. The FAA, on January 17, 2023, approved the Declarations of Compliance for Skydio 2+ and X2E drone models.

Another phase of drone development activity has been initiated in the UK, with the Open Skies Cornwall program assembling nearly a dozen partners to test use cases and recruit additional participants to facilitate regular UAV services along the southwest England peninsula.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed new low-noise propellers that can make current multirotor drones much less of an acoustic annoyance.

German technology giant Siemens is partnering up with California startup Skyway to research and develop electrical supplies and infrastructure needed to power global vertiports soon expected to facilitate flights of electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles like air taxis.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has delivered its report on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) efforts to integrate drones into the national airspace and its methods of processing requests for operations not covered by Part 107 rules. The main conclusions of the audit are the regulator needs to do better in both establishing and communicating a comprehensive strategy for broader UAV use, and in defining a uniform procedure for issuing waivers.

Snowbirds, passionate lovers of warmer climes, and obsessively protective owners of expensive tech rejoice. A Reddit contributor to r/drones has just offered compelling evidence of why it’s ever so wise to stay way out of the cold – this time in the form of a DJI drone-cicle.