Category Archives: Non-Military & Commercial UAS

NASA Success for Complex Drone Traffic Management Test at FAA Test Sites

San Francisco Bay Area reporters interview NASA researchers and observe the FAA test sites fly 24 drones to test air traffic management platform at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California

In the first and largest demonstration of its kind, NASA and operators from the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) test sites across the country flew 22 drones simultaneously to assess rural operations of NASA’s UAS traffic management (UTM) research platform. Continue reading →

The Founding Fathers of DJI

The photo above was shot in Shenzhen, Lotus Hill Peak and on it are young and enthusiastic founders of DJI. DJI’s initial entrepreneurial team – from right to left: Wang Frank, Chen Jinying, Lu Zhihui and Chen Chuqiang – were essential for the initial two-year existence of DJI. Continue reading →

World’s First Pop-Up Drone Café

The world’s first café using the tiny domestic unmanned aircraft as servers has opened in a Dutch university. The pop-up Drone Café will be serving up all weekend as part of celebrations for the “Dream and Dare” festival marking the 60th anniversary of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Continue reading →

Sentera Extends Distribution of Infrastructure Solutions

Sentera, LLC, a global provider of software, sensor, and drone technologies to the infrastructure inspection industry, has signed a distribution agreement with TESSCO Technologies Inc., a U.S. provider of product solutions required to build, use, and maintain Towers, Wireless Communications, Utilities, Mining, Oil & Gas, Renewable energy systems and Transportation.

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Canada Working on UAS Regulations

In 2015, Canada released a Notice of Proposed Amendment (“NPA”), proposing a new risk-based regulatory framework for small unmanned aircraft systems (“sUAS”) that weigh less than 55 pounds (25 kg) and are operated within visual line-of-sight (“VLOS”). Although Canada and the U.S. have engaged to coordinate UAS activities and committed to establishing a mechanism to share experiences to align regulatory approaches (to the extent practical), the NPA sets forth a more complex framework for sUAS operations at various risk levels and may offer more flexibility to commercial users. The final rules are expected to be released this year.

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PrecisionHawk Secures $18M Series C Funding

PrecisionHawk Inc. — a provider of aerial data and safety platforms for drones — announced that it has closed an $18 million round of funding with Verizon Ventures, a subsidiary of USAA, NTT Docomo Ventures, and Yamaha Motor with full participation from existing investors Intel Capital, Millennium Technology Value Partners and Indiana University’s Innovate Indiana Fund in an oversubscribed round.

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Calls for Government Action Follow Heathrow UAV Incident

A lack of regulation has been blamed for a drone hitting a British Airways passenger jet, as it emerged that police have failed to investigate 40 near-misses in the past year. Calls for action to mitigate the threat to passenger aircraft from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) came from Europe’s main regional airline trade group and others following an April 17 incident at London Heathrow Airport.

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Camcopter in Canadian Ice-Breaking Operations

At the end of March 2016 at Fogo Island in Canada, Schiebel’s CAMCOPTER S-100 Unmanned Air System (UAS) successfully demonstrated its capabilities to a host of dignitaries from the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy, Transport Canada, the Canadian National Research Council and the University of Alaska in partnership with the Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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