If there’s ever a radiological catastrophe in the U.S. like the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, the stewards of the former national nuclear weapons proving ground in Nevada expect to be ready to deploy remote-controlled drones to check for contamination. Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
NOAA Lets Hurricanes Destroy UAS That Gather Data
While scientists have gotten a lot better at estimating the strength of a hurricane before it hits land, they still don’t fully understand how hurricanes form. While satellite measurements can give meteorologists a pretty good picture of the atmospheric temperature and precipitation within a hurricane, sometimes the resolution is still “too coarse” to help researchers understand how storms form and mature, says Robbie Hood, the director of NOAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program.
Bomb-Sniffing Drone Technology
An animation of drone technology used to detect explosives is shown on a computer screen in the office of Jerry Kulcinski, emeritus professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Fusion Technology Lab.
Drones may soon have the capability to save thousands of lives each year by detecting terrorists’ improvised explosive devices and active land mines from long-ago wars thanks to innovative technology developed at UW-Madison. Continue reading
Research into Attack-Resilient Micro Aerial Vehicles
Guoquan Huang (right) works on a micro aerial vehicle with graduate students Kevin Eckenhoff (left) and Yulin Yang.
Guoquan Huang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware was recently awarded a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to design resource-aware, attack-resilient, consistent MAV navigation. Continue reading
Paperlike Battery Electrode Developed by a Kansas State University Engineer
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A paperlike battery electrode developed by a Kansas State University engineer may improve tools for space exploration or unmanned aerial vehicles. Continue reading
New UAV Can Launch from Underwater
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, have developed an innovative unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can stay on station beneath the water, then launch into the air to perform a variety of missions. Continue reading
DARPA Selects Aurora’s LightningStrike 24-prop Hybrid VTOL X-Plane
Aurora Flight Sciences announced that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded the company the prime contract for Phase 2 of the Agency’s Vertical Takeoff and Landing Experimental Plane (VTOL X-Plane) program.
North Dakota SU Gets Hermes 450 for Ag Research
North Dakota State’s unmanned aerial vehicle program has been and continues to do ground-breaking research since it began in 2014. The program, led through the NDSU extension service of the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering department, has conducted research at the Carrington and Williston research centers. It now will be conducting research out of the Hillsboro airport using a newly acquired Hermes 450. Continue reading