Polish defence industry conglomerate PGZ announced on 8 November that it had created a “centre of competence” for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at Military Aviation Works No. 2 (WZL 2), located in the northwestern town of Bydgoszcz. Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
Near Earth Autonomy Gets NASA Award for UAS Flight Safety
Near Earth Autonomy has announced the successful award through the NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to support NASA’s mission to introduce unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the National Airspace (NAS). Under this award, Near Earth will develop and demonstrate technologies that enable safe unmanned aircraft (UA) operation in the case of unexpected contingency situations. The SBIR award is in partnership with NASA Langley Research Center. Continue reading
Why Nasa is Testing Swedish Mini-Drones
A Swedish company’s miniature drones have caught the attention of US space agency Nasa thanks to their groundbreaking autonomous positioning technology.
Mono-Propeller Drone
A drone designed to fly with one propeller has been developed at the Institute for Dynamics Systems and Control at ETH Zurich. Continue reading
No GPS, No Problem: Next-Generation Navigation
A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside has developed a highly reliable and accurate navigation system that exploits existing environmental signals such as cellular and Wi-Fi, rather than the Global Positioning System (GPS). The technology can be used as a standalone alternative to GPS, or complement current GPS-based systems to enable highly reliable, consistent, and tamper-proof navigation. Continue reading
Bio-Inspired Algorithm for Online Visual Tracking
Tracking of targets within aerial footage is becoming increasingly important, for example, as the applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) continue to expand (UAVs are now being used in film production, mining, news media, and agriculture). Moreover, the world’s security agencies are gathering enormous amounts of UAV video data, from which they are looking for events of interest, e.g., suspicious vehicles. Continue reading
Budgerigars Help Boeing Study into Collision Prevention
Research revealing birds avoid crashing into each other by veering right may help develop technology to stop mid-air plane collisions. The Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland teamed with Boeing Defence Australia for the first study of its kind, which used budgerigars. Continue reading
General Atomics Unveils Mechanical Arm for DARPA Gremlins UAS Program
General Atomics, which builds the iconic Predator, has rolled out its offering for DARPA’s Gremlins program, blandly called the Small Unmanned Air Vehicle (SUAS). The goal: Build drones — and equally critical, a launch and recovery system — that can take off from a manned aircraft, conduct a mission and come back aboard the plane. Continue reading