It looks like a hobbyist’s model of a single engine Piper Cub, with a four-stroke engine and an eight-foot wingspan. But researchers at Georgia Tech have loaded its cockpit with an autopilot and no small measure of artificial intelligence. Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
Russia to Develop Stealth UCAV
RAC MiG has signed a research and development contract to build an unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) based on its previous Skat design, first unveiled in 2007. Continue reading
University of Florida Laboratory Develops Next Hurricane Hunters
Kamran Mohseni envisions a day when the unmanned aircraft in his laboratory at the University of Florida will swarm over, under and through hurricanes to help predict the strength and path of the storms. Continue reading
Lab Research Cuts Imagery Evaluation Costs for US Navy Triton Programme
An engineer at Naval Air Station Patuxent River is leading an initiative that will save the Navy’s MQ-4C Triton Unmanned Aircraft System programme several hundred thousand dollars. Continue reading
Google Invests in Clean Energy UAS
Google just bought one of the most promising airborne systems in development—it’s not for surveillance, it’s not for the military, and it’s not for hobbyists. It’s for making clean energy. It’s essentially a giant, autonomous wind turbine that takes to the sky like a mechanical kite. And it may be integral to the future of wind power. Continue reading
Government of Canada Funds Development of Unmanned Aircraft System Center of Excellence
The Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, has announced that Aéroport d’Alma has been granted financial assistance to build the infrastructure needed to group all of the activities of the Unmanned Aerial System Center of Excellence under one roof. Continue reading
Canadian Professor Gets C$345K Research Grant to Predict Forest Fires
Dr. Abdelhamid Tayebi, an electrical engineering professor at Lakehead University just received a $225,000 Individual Operating Grant to look at ways to fly unmanned aircraft into dangerous places to perform a specific task. Continue reading
Robotic Insects Make First Controlled Flight
In the very early hours of the morning, in a Harvard robotics laboratory last summer, an insect took flight. Half the size of a paperclip, weighing less than a tenth of a gram, it leapt a few inches, hovered for a moment on fragile, flapping wings, and then sped along a preset route through the air. Continue reading