The University of Sherbrooke in Canada has gotten creative, and come up with a very clever design for a fixed wing drone called SUWAVE (Sherbrooke University Water-Air VEhicle) that uses lakes as landing pads. It crash lands in them, recharges with solar power, and then takes off again with a brilliant hinged propeller. Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
UAS-Based Change Detection of Glacial Transition Zone
Glacier-related applications of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in high mountain regions with steep topography are relatively rare. This study makes a contribution to the lack of UAS applications in studying alpine glaciers in the European Alps. Continue reading
NASA Selects Three Aeronautics Teams to Explore an Autonomous Future
Three teams of NASA researchers who have dreamed up potential solutions for pieces of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) puzzle have received the nod to officially begin formal feasibility studies of their concepts. Continue reading
White Paper: Dysfunction in UAS Regulatory Safety Decision Making – Analysis and a New Paradigm
In this paper by Suzette Matthews, Esq. and Frank L. Frisbie, P.E., the authors postulate that the absence of an articulated paradigm and decisional standards for determining whether a particular UAS operation will be “reasonably safe” for performance over the non-consenting public is the most significant barrier to certification/operating approval for commercial UAS. Continue reading
Wirth Research VTOL Hydrogen Powered UAV
Wirth Research has released more details of its new Tilt Rotor, Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL), hydrogen fuel cell powered, advanced terrain mapping drone. The all-new Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) will be VTOL capable for its long-endurance missions, carrying its primary mission payload of a sophisticated suite of terrain-mapping sensors and on-board data processing capabilities. Continue reading
Six-Degrees-of-Freedom Omnicopter
The Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC), ETH Zurich, Switzerland has developed a computationally efficient trajectory generator for six degrees-of-freedom multi-rotor vehicles, i.e. vehicles that can independently control their position and attitude. Continue reading
NOAA Testing UAS to Measure Lower Atmosphere
A few hours before storms formed in northern Oklahoma during the second week in May, three unmanned aircraft flew through the air hundreds of feet above the ground to observe important changes in the atmosphere that could spawn severe thunderstorms. Continue reading
Lockheed Launches a Flying Drone from Floating Drone
The question of how to launch drones over the ocean has been a lingering technical problem as the U.S. military has scaled up its interest in unmanned system. But Lockheed Martin just launched a small aerial drone out over the ocean through another drone, showing the possibilities of cross-domain drone launches. Continue reading