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Posts tagged "uav"
Civilian drone use in South Africa.
In South Africa, drones repurposed to deliver beer to festivalgoers
Beer-lovers can already brew their own ales in remote locations thanks to the Carbonator Bottle, but what about those who prefer to have their beverages delivered direct to them? Using tech to offer ultra-convenience, guests at South Africa’s OppiKoppi festival in August will be able to use their smartphones to order beer to be delivered directly to them via drones. READ MORE…
China’s use of drones in its war on drugs.
See on Scoop.it - Concentration of Wealth == Existential Risk
BEIJING (AP) — Determined to kill or capture a murderous Mekong River drug lord, China’s security forces considered a tactic they’d never tried before: calling a drone strike on his remote hideaway deep in the hills of Myanmar.
A wonderful microdrone.
Robotics researchers unveiled an electronic housefly on Thursday, one that can hover in air, flapping its wings to steer in a first demonstration of controlled artificial-insect flight.
A new look at older military tech given a modern use.
Image Credit Wikimedia Commons
“In the wake of budget cuts, the US Navy is turning to older technology in the war on drugs. As the Associated Press reports, last week the Navy began testing two new tools to monitor and capture drug smugglers in the Caribbean: the blimp-like aerostat, which has previously been used for surveillance in Iraq and Afghanistan as well to monitor the US-Mexico border, and a drone that’s launched from the deck of a ship by hand. While both are relatively older technology, they’ve been outfitted with radar, cameras, and sensors that reportedly expand a ship’s radar range from five miles to around 50 miles.” - The Verge
An innovative civilian use for drones.
Matternet wants to replace the postal system with drones
Snip from Huffington Post:
Imagine a world where drones fly the skies — but the drones aren’t for warfare. Instead they’re delivering packages, leapfrogging traditional infrastructure to create a world connected by tiny, nonviolent drones. In the U.S., such drones could replace the aging postal system; in developing countries, the drones could connect rural communities to markets, alleviating poverty and delivering badly needed supplies and medicines. […] A case study done by the Matternet team in Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho in southern Africa, showed that the entire 140-kilometer capital could be connected by a drone network for $900,000. “In contrast, the cost to build a 2 kilometer winding road is a million dollars,” Santana said. For cash-poor countries with little infrastructure like Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the cost difference is crucial, and the infrastructure Matternet provides — a whole network, rather than one road — could be lifesaving, she added.
A civilian UAV for humanitarian purposes.
Engineering Students Launch a A Humanitarian UAV on Kickstarter
The HLQ (which stands for heavy lift quadcopter) spans 6 feet with rotors and was developed by a team of student mechanical engineers from San Jose State University in California.
Nick Conover, Chris Fulmer, Carlos Guerrero, and Gabriel Tellez designed the HLQ project for their undergrad senior project. And now they’re asking for help on Kickstarter to build a full prototype.
HLQ is not the world’s first unmanned cargo carrier. There’s the K-Max, a full-scale unmanned helicopter, and Matternet’s infrastructure paradigm, which aspires to launch do-gooder drones in rural areas. But the latter focus on small payloads like medicines or lab samples, and max out at 4 pounds. And the K-Max costs millions of dollars.
HLQ can lift heavy cargo and would cost a fraction of that. Onboard the 50-pound HLQ, an open source Arduino board called Ardupilot that is pre-programmed for unmanned aerial vehicle control runs the show. The team augmented that with a one gigahertz processor give HLQ computer vision, and enable the quadcopter to fly autonomously. The students will fabricate the arms of HLQ, which double as drive train, from aluminum to dissipate heat from the motors and have designed them to be swappable if they get damaged or need upgrades to carbon fiber.
(via Students Kickstart A Do-Gooder Drone | Popular Science)
A super small drone.
The mini drones can see over walls and around corners (credit: U.K. Army)
“A tiny remote-control helicopter is being used for surveillance on the front line to detect enemy threats to British troops.
British troops are using a nano drone just 10cm long and weighing 16 grams on the front line in Afghanistan to provide vital information on the ground, Sky News reports.”
An infographic look at civilian drone usage.
UAVs: Japan to develop missile-detecting drone
“Tokyo (AFP) Nov 4, 2012 - Japan is planning to develop an unmanned drone that could help detect a North Korean nuclear missile attack and to counter China’s military buildup, a report said Sunday.
The defence ministry has demanded 3 billion yen ($372 million) over the next four years to develop the aircraft, which would come into operation in 2020, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported without citing sources.
The development of the drone, which will be equipped with an infrared sensor to seek out low-altitude missiles, comes after Japan failed to detect North Korea’s failed rocket launch in April.”
