background preloader

Drones

Facebook Twitter

Perching AR Drone Can Watch You Forever. Droning On: The Anatomy of A Drone. Solar-Powered Drone Could Fly Nonstop For Five Years. Though many people immediately associate unmanned drones with military use or some kind of dubious espionage activity, but they have incredible potential to be used in a wide variety of peaceful and scientific applications.

Solar-Powered Drone Could Fly Nonstop For Five Years

In addition to delivering supplies to disaster-stricken areas, drones could be used to gather information about things like weather and wildlife. Titan Aerospace is currently developing a drone named Solara 50 that is being hailed as an “atmospheric satellite” and has quite a lot to offer in terms of gathering scientific data. The drone will fly at an altitude of over 19,000 meters (65,000 feet) where there is little air traffic and above most weather that could impede its travels. Flying at that height will also give it unobstructed access to the sun, which will power the 3,000 solar cells that cover its 50-meter-long (164 feet) wings. A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors. Some drones can kill you, this one could save your life. An Iranian research lab has created a drone to save people drowning at sea.

Some drones can kill you, this one could save your life

Un drone pour surveiller votre enfant sur le chemin de l'école. Si vous êtes du genre parent ultra-inquiet, vous êtes certainement très inquiets à la moindre sortie du nid de votre enfant chéri. Certains préfèrent suivre à la trace leurs rejetons, d'autres optent pour une tactique bien plus moderne et technologique... en utilisant un drone. MeCam, un minuscule drone qui vous filmera partout. Accueil Next MeCam, un minuscule drone qui vous filmera partout.

MeCam, un minuscule drone qui vous filmera partout

Flone. Drone Uses a Smartphone to Find Its Way. Small Drones Deserve Sensible Regulation. It’s no secret that the United States may be losing its edge in civilian aviation.

Small Drones Deserve Sensible Regulation

Nowhere is this more apparent than with small unmanned aircraft, those tiny flying robots that promise to transform agriculture, forestry, pipeline monitoring, filmmaking, and more. While many other countries are racing to develop and use such drones, U.S. innovators remain more or less stuck on the starting line, mired in federal indecision and red tape. At the recent Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference, at New York University, one speaker imagined what would happen if the Wright brothers were to face such restrictions today: Moments before takeoff, a black Chevy Suburban would pull up, federal agents would jump out, and they would halt the ill-conceived experiment for safety reasons. While such intervention seems oddly reasonable today, government safety mandates are now being extended to astonishingly small scales.

This article originally appeared in print as “Gasping for Airspace.” The U.S. has designated six sites for testing commercial drones. It's honestly hard to say.

The U.S. has designated six sites for testing commercial drones

The military usage of the term involves both autonomous and remotely-piloted craft of all sizes, which paints a pretty broad definition. So for the RC hobbyist, the next couple of years are going to be interesting. We've had FPV kit for planes, helis and multirotors for quite some time, giving the pilot a "drone's eye view", which is not at all far removed from the kind of things the military does with them. That's the issue; while we use this type of equipment on our models as an extension of the flight experience, when it comes down to brass tacks the data coming from the aircraft (camera feed, positional/GPS info, craft status telemetry) is the exact same kind of data the military gets from their drones.

Drone crew caught attempting to deliver smokes to prison inmates. The Customs and Border Protection agency flies drones, in part, to catch smugglers bringing contraband into the US, so it was just a matter of time before smugglers tried using drones themselves.

Drone crew caught attempting to deliver smokes to prison inmates

Unfortunately for smugglers in Georgia, their drone got spotted and they landed in jail instead. Teaching tiny drones how to fly themselves. Thanks to the wars in the Middle East, drones like the Predator have become household names.

Teaching tiny drones how to fly themselves

They’re getting more powerful and more lethal every day, and these combat drones have begun overshadowing important developments. The really exciting recent drone developments haven’t been on military airfields—they're in university labs. To find these advances, don't look to the nightly news. Advantage: YouTube. If you’re reading this article, chances are you’ve seen a few of these videos: flying robots flitting through windows, swarms of hovering machines moving in choreographed precision, miniature helicopters playing catch and assembling buildings or dancing. Over the past decade, there’s been an explosion in the capabilities of these UAVs. Still, even with advances in hardware, it’s always a challenge to fit enough computing onboard a flying robot. One of the first things you might notice about these UAVs is their incredible agility. Let's start with how UAVs fly themselves.

SmartCopter - Autonomous Flight with a Smartphone as On-Board Processing Unit (2012) Flying hacker contraption hunts other drones, turns them into zombies. Serial hacker Samy Kamkar has released all the hardware and software specifications that hobbyists need to build an aerial drone that seeks out other drones in the air, hacks them, and turns them into a conscripted army of unmanned vehicles under the attacker's control.

Flying hacker contraption hunts other drones, turns them into zombies

Dubbed SkyJack, the contraption uses a radio-controlled Parrot AR.Drone quadcopter carrying a Raspberry Pi circuit board, a small battery, and two wireless transmitters. The devices run a combination of custom software and off-the-shelf applications that seek out wireless signals of nearby Parrot drones, hijack the wireless connections used to control them, and commandeer the victims' flight-control and camera systems.

SkyJack will also run on land-based Linux devices and hack drones within radio range.