The Office of Naval Research has awarded Rutgers University a grant to develop a drone – equally adept at flying through the air and navigating underwater – that could speed search-and-rescue operations, monitor the spread of oil spills and even help the Navy rapidly defuse threats from underwater mines. Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
DARPA Seeks Advanced Airborne Networking Capabilities for Hostile Environments
DARPA solicits proposals to enable manned and unmanned air systems to rapidly, securely, and automatically share information across diverse waveforms and networks despite adversary jamming. Continue reading
Unmanned NOAA Hexacopter Monitors Health of Endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales
A NOAA Fisheries research team flying a remotely operated hexacopter in Washington’s San Juan Islands in September collected high-resolution aerial photogrammetry images of all 81 Southern Resident killer whales that showed the endangered whales in robust condition and that several appear to be pregnant. Continue reading
University Tests Graphene-Coated UAV Wing
The city-based University of Central Lancashire is working on a research initiative, between the University of Central Lancashire’s Engineering Innovation Center (EIC), and The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute which has just seen the first flight of a UAV part-constructed with graphene. Continue reading
Sonar Navigation, Mapping System for UAVs
Researchers at the University of Georgia are working to bring a new level of precision to the navigation systems used to guide drones. The work is supported through a contract with Southern Company, one of the nation’s largest energy companies, which plans to use unmanned aircraft to enhance safety for crews in the field and improve reliability for customers. Continue reading
UAS for Animal Distribution Studies Research
Icarus – DARPA’s Vanishing Air Vehicles Programme
It sounds like an engineering fantasy, or maybe an episode from Mission Impossible: A flock of small, single-use, unpowered delivery vehicles dropped from an aircraft, each of which literally vanishes after landing and delivering food or medical supplies to an isolated village during an epidemic or disaster. And it would be nothing more than a fantasy, were it not that the principle behind disappearing materials has already been proven. Continue reading
Unmanned Aircraft in Canadian Wildlife Study
In a portion of Manitoba, Canada, so remote you have to fly in by helicopter, a research team led by the University of North Dakota and the American Museum of Natural History spent the summer in the polar bear capital of the world deploying the latest tool – Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) — in a nearly five-decade-old ecological study.


