News
Dave Mathewson, executive director of the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA), which is the world’s largest community-based organization whose members fly model aircraft for recreational and educational purposes, has released the following statement on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) new broad-based advisory committee and the agency’s
News
A computer model of how bees use vision to avoid hitting walls could be a breakthrough in the development of autonomous drones. Bees control their flight using the speed of motion (optic flow) of the visual world around them. A study by Scientists at the University of Sheffield Department of
News
Roke Manor Research (Roke) will be trialling the world’s first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capable of landing autonomously on a moving ship using vision technology during the Royal Navy’s Unmanned Warrior exercise in October. Roke’s Autoland technology, which has been funded and developed in collaboration with the
News
Tekever expects to begin the first flight test campaign under the European Space Agency and European Maritime Safety Agency’s Rapsody programme in Malta this summer, which will detect the movements of small vessels and monitor ship lanes for pollution. The company’s AR5 Life Ray Evolution is being used
Payloads
Insitu, through its collaboration with Hood Technologies and Sentient, has announced that it will incorporate the ViDAR (Visual Detection and Ranging) payload into its fleet of unmanned systems, beginning with its ScanEagle unmanned aircraft. ViDAR is a wide area autonomous detection system for electro-optic imagery in the maritime domain. In
Military
A risk-reduction request for proposals (RfP) for the US Navy’s MQ-25 unmanned air vehicle acquisition is expected to be released “this summer”, which will help set out the timeline in which the service can realistically expect the tanker system to be deployed on-board its carrier fleet. Speaking to Flightglobal
News
Martin UAV has completed development of the autonomous flight control system for its V-Bat vertical take-off and landing unmanned air vehicle, which will lead to a series of customer flight demonstrations in summer and further testing for the US Navy. The MLB Company design has been in development for some
News
The US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) unmanned aircraft systems integration office has cautioned state and local government legislators in America against creating a patchwork of rules and regulations relating to the operation of drones. Because UAVs are defined by law as aircraft, the FAA’s rules for operating in
News
For the first time in aviation history, a fixed-wing unmanned aircraft has successfully tested a cloud-seeding payload during an experimental flight in Nevada. Flown at Hawthorne Industrial Airport under the state's FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Test Site designation, the Drone America Savant™ aircraft reached
Testing
AeroVironment, Inc. has announced that the company – in partnership with SmartC2, a provider of flight business management systems – will team with NASA on its Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Technology Capability Levels (TCL) 2 flight demonstration slated for October 2016. The demonstration will build on results from UTM TCL1 field testing
Events
Following the announcement about the formation of the Commercial Drone Alliance, Drone World Expo is pleased to announce the event has been selected by this new industry group as its official trade show. The 2nd annual Drone World Expo, the defining event for the commercial applications of UAS technology, will
C-UAS
A prototype to counter unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) using capabilities already in the Army inventory is now being put to the test at the service’s Network Integration Evaluation (NIE). The NIE is a soldier-led evaluation that assesses how to integrate programs of record into and progress the Army’s