Category Archives: Research

Mitigating Magnetic Field Dangers for Power Line Inspection Drones

Unmanned aircraft systems  have emerged as a novel method of inspecting power lines, allowing power utility companies to review the health of their infrastructure more quickly and more safely. But drone operators must maintain a delicate balance, flying close enough to power lines to capture highly detailed images while staying far enough away so as not to be affected by the electromagnetic fields generated by power lines, which interfere with drone operations. Continue reading →

Johns Hopkins Researchers Study Autonomous Air Traffic Control for Drones

Ten years from now, we could be in for a new sort of traffic jam. In the near future, posits a new study led by two members of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, some 65,000 drones—weighing up to 55 pounds each, most of them programmed to operate without a pilot—will be “taking off, flying, or landing” per hour in what is so far largely uncontrolled lower U.S. airspace. Continue reading →

MIT Drones Navigate Unseen Environments with Liquid Neural Networks

Inspired by the adaptable nature of organic brains, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have introduced a method for robust flight navigation agents to master vision-based fly-to-target tasks in intricate, unfamiliar environments. The liquid neural networks, which can continuously adapt to new data inputs, showed prowess in making reliable decisions in unknown domains like forests, urban landscapes, and environments with added noise, rotation, and occlusion. Continue reading →