Designed by Createk Design Lab at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec,the Multimodal Autonomous Drone (S-MAD) can repeatedly perform autonomous landing and takeoffs from walls. Presented at Living Machines 2017, Stanford (Best Robotics Paper Award). Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
UK Small RPAS Mid-Air Collision Study Published
Airliner cockpit for impact testing (left) and computer reference model
The Department for Transport, the Military Aviation Authority and British Airline Pilots’ Association commissioned a study into the effects of a mid-air collision between small remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS, commonly known as a drones) and manned aircraft. Continue reading
Precision Farming via Satellite Imaging
Drone with Butterfleye LS hyperspectral images
Precision farming is set to become even more precise with a new camera drawing on satellite imaging. Thanks to research with ESA on new cameras, hyper-spectral cameras flying on drones are now able to see details as small as 4–5 cm. Continue reading
US Army Seeks Shape-Changing Biomimetic Aircraft
U.S. Army wants aircraft that can change their physical shape to meet the requirements of a mission. The concept is called “biomimetics,” or designing equipment based on phenomena found in nature. For example, the Wright brothers were inspired to design their first airplane after observing birds in flight. Continue reading
THOR Hybrid UAV from Singapore
Conventional multicopter drones are excellent at hovering and VTOL, but they can’t cover long distances as efficiently as fixed-wing aircraft. A team of students from the Singapore University of Technology and Design is trying to get the best of both worlds with the Transformable HOvering Rotorcraft (THOR). Continue reading
Insitu’s RoboFlight Academy
Spencer Honald, left, an incoming senior at The Dalles High School, and college senior Julian Rogers were mentors at last week’s RoboFlight Academy,
A pile of eight gutted Ironman toys sat on the gym floor last week at Insitu’s RoboFlight Academy, held at Henkle Middle School in White Salmon. The remote-controlled flying toys had been stripped of their circuit boards and motors, which were put to better use in a variety of made-from-scratch drones by the 25 mostly Gorge area teens enrolled in the weeklong program, which just finished its sixth year. Continue reading
Survey UAS/RPAS/Drone Operations – Online in 5 Languages
This survey, which is aimed at the worldwide UAS/RPAS/Drone operator community is now available in English, French, German, Italian & Spanish. Continue reading
World’s First Multiple Aerial-Ground Manipulator
The projet proposed by the Tele-MAGMaS international team, coordinated by Antonio Franchi (CNRS researcher at LAAS, RIS team), has been one of the five projects selected in Fall 2016 by a panel of international experts for the Kuka Innovation Award 2017 where they demonstrated a world’s first prototype of Multiple Aerial-Ground Manipulator System (MAGMaS) at the Hannover Fair, on April 2017. Continue reading