Agriculture
The Authority for the Development of Vegetation Cover at King Abdulaziz Royal Reserve in Riyadh has deployed drones for the dispersal of 300,000 seeds of wild Sidr over large areas in Fayyad Al-Summan region. This is part of the authority’s afforestation campaign titled “Let’s make it green.
Regulations
California-based Joby Aviation’s second pre-production prototype aircraft has been granted airworthiness approvals. In December 2021, both the US Air Force (USAF) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave the Special Airworthiness Certificate and airworthiness approval, respectively, for the aircraft. The new addition and approvals increase the capacity for the
Video
Hundreds of drones took to the night sky above Sydney's iconic harbour in the first days of 2022, as a part of the six-day ELEVATE Sydney festival, organised by Destination NSW. Between Saturday 1 January to Wednesday 5 January, 500 drones took to the sky each night in
First Responders
In the plains of central Spain, just about 90 minutes south of Madrid, a firefighting robot is taking flight. With two engines, a smooth underbelly, and a construction straight out of World War II’s Atlantic theater, the Singular Aircraft Flyox is a drone designed as an aerial workhorse on
UAM/UTM
Next Century Ventures (NCV), the corporate venture capital fund of NEXEN TIRE, announced today that it has invested in ANRA Technologies, a supplier of air traffic control and commercial solutions in the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) industry, to further NCV's goal of spearheading the mobility revolution. Last March,
MIT researchers have demonstrated diminutive drones that can zip around with bug-like agility and resilience, which could eventually perform these tasks. The soft actuators that propel these microrobots are very durable, but they require much higher voltages than similarly-sized rigid actuators. The featherweight robots can’t carry the necessary power
Patents
Woolpert has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for its “Airborne Topo-Bathy Lidar System and Methods Thereof.” A lidar sensor system was developed by a multidisciplinary research and development team incorporating these technologies that enable the collection of high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data at
Data Links & Communications
On November 18, 2021, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) used two company-owned Avenger Unmanned Aircraft Systems, each equipped with a Lockheed Martin Legion Pod, to send long-range air threat data captured passively and fused by an advanced sensor algorithm to a Command Center. “This first-time, industry-funded flight test demonstrates
Civil Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) will be the most dynamic growth sector of the world aerospace industry this decade as nations open their airspace, commercial applications take off, and civil governments adopt systems for new roles in border security and public safety. Jeremiah GertlerTeal GroupThe United States The U.S.
Military
The U.S. Navy has released a picture that shows a payload module for the Boeing Insitu RQ-21 Blackjack unmanned aircraft that appears to give it the ability to deploy a smaller quadcopter-type drone in flight. This module was seen displayed next to others that are clearly designed to hold
Commercial
A Japanese company has successfully tested drones to exterminate wasps, which previously was considered dangerous work where people can die.
Business
Volansi, the Silicon Valley-based autonomous drone logistics company and Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the global aerospace national security company, announced a teaming agreement and partnership in support of the Army Future Tactical Unmanned Systems Increment 2 (FTUAS) Program. Based off Volansi’s design of a commercial unmanned aircraft and SNC’