Category Archives: Research

Only One in Eight Willing to Fly on Unmanned Aircraft

New research(1) from Revolution.Aero, the global meeting place for people who are reshaping, rethinking and revolutionising business and personal aviation, reveals  13% of people would be prepared to fly in an unmanned aircraft.  One in five men (20%) said they would do this, compared to just 6% of women. Continue reading →

Improving Cellular Network Coverage with UAVs

RUDN University mathematicians have simulated the work of a cellular network and modelled the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as additional transmitters. Most of the available communication systems have flat coverage and do not take into account the difference in altitude, which results in the appearance of the so-called “blind” zones. Flying drones could solve this issue. Continue reading →

Novel Flying Robot Mimics Rapid Insect Flight

A novel insect-inspired flying robot, developed by TU Delft researchers from the Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab), has been presented in Science (14 September 2018). Experiments with this first autonomous, free-flying and agile flapping-wing robot – carried out in collaboration with Wageningen University & Research – improved our understanding of how fruit flies control aggressive escape manoeuvres. Continue reading →

Teaching Drones to Fly Through Small Holes


The University of Maryland’s Perception and Robotics Group has just published a paper on a system that allows a drone to fly through very small and completely unknown gaps using just a single camera and onboard processing.  Continue reading →

Robotic Herding of a Flock of Birds Using Drones


Researchers in Korea have made a new algorithm for enabling a single robotic unmanned aerial vehicle to herd a flock of birds away from a designated airspace. This novel approach allows a single autonomous quadrotor drone to herd an entire flock of birds away without breaking their formation. Continue reading →

Asia’s First Fully Solar-Powered Quadcopter Drone

A team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has achieved a major step forward in stretching the capabilities of quadcopter drones by powering the flight solely by natural sunlight. A first in Asia, the current prototype has flown above 10 metres in test flights – higher than a typical three storey building – utilising solar power with no battery or other energy storage on board. Continue reading →