First Responders
In Switzerland emergency centres respond to about 1,000 to calls about hikers lost or injured in the forests annually, according to the University of Zurich. But research the university has completed, in collaboration with Università della Svizzera italiana and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland,
Commercial
A team of Nevada scientists and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) engineers have successfully flight tested the first-ever autonomous cloud seeding aircraft platform. Cloud seeding flare tests were deployed from Drone America's DAx8 UAS aircraft flown at a remote desert location outside of Reno, Nevada in early February. As
Testing
AT&T and Intel have agreed to test how Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) work on a network designed to connect devices on the ground. Intel and AT&T will be working to solve major issues in the space, including connectivity. Mobile World Congress attendees will get a first
Testing
The MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft system built for the U.S. Navy by Northrop Grumman Corporation has successfully completed Operational Assessment (OA). Pending final data analysis, the completion of this milestone signals the maturity of the system and paves the way for a positive Milestone C decision. Milestone C will
VTOL
Schiebel and the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR), the Netherlands Coastguard and the Royal Netherlands Air Force conducted a series of at the airport of Den Helder in December 2015. The AIRICA (ATM Innovative RPAS Integration for Coastguard Applications) project marks a major step forward in the process of safe integration
Testing
Soon-Jo Chung, Associate Professor, Aerospace Engineering & Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,is developing a robotic falcon that chases birds away from airfields. “The premise here is to figure out how to reverse engineer bio-inspired flight from the robotics standpoint,” Chung said. “How can we
Commercial
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Air and Marine Operations (AMO) division announced late last week it is testing a programme to operate Predator drones from a civilian airport in San Angelo, Texas. The three- to four-week deployment, which began on January 28th, is a first-ever UAS deployment
Data Links & Communications
WAAYTV.com - Huntsville, Alabama - News Weather, Sports | The Apache Project Office and Redstone Test Center are teaming up and using a combination of manned and unmanned aircraft imagery to help pilots have greater situational awareness while in the air. Manned-Unmanned Teaming allows pilots to stream real-time video obtained
Testing
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin Company, using a UH-60MU BLACK HAWK helicopter enabled with Sikorsky’s MATRIX Technology and CMU’s Land Tamer autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), recently participated in a joint autonomy demonstration that proved the capability of new, ground-air cooperative missions. Such missions
Aerial Photography
EnergyOr Technologies Inc., a supplier of advanced PEM fuel cell systems for aerospace applications, has demonstrated the world’s longest multi-rotor drone flight in real-world operating conditions. On December 16th , 2015, EnergyOr’s H2Quad 400 flew for over two hours while recording 4K video, using a 3-axis stabilizing gimbal to
Military
On 30 December 2015, Urban Aeronautics’ AirMule completed its first autonomous, untethered flight at Megiddo airfield in northern Israel. Rafi Yoeli – chief executive of UrbanAero, the parent company of Tactical Robotics, which developed the vertical take-off and landing aircraft – says the test schedule in Megiddo includes plans to demonstrate the
Testing
Mo Rastgaar, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Human-Interactive Robotics Lab (HIRoLab) at the Michigan Technological University, has been working on a drone catcher, which could pursue and capture rogue drones that might threaten military installations, air traffic, sporting events—even the White House. “I thought, ‘If the