“Biology has taught us a huge amount about flight,”‘ says Kenny Breuer, professor of engineering at the Air Force Research Laboratory. Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
DARPA’s Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (Micro-PNT) without GPS
The U.S. Military relies on the space-based Global Positioning System (GPS) to aid air, land and sea navigation. Like the GPS units in many automobiles today, a simple receiver and some processing power is all that is needed for accurate navigation. Continue reading
RPAS Used in Exploration of Active Volcanoes
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Researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in collaboration with the University of Costa Rica are involved in exploration and monitoring of active volcanoes in the central mountains of Costa Rica by employing RPAS. Continue reading
NASA UAVSAR Mission Prepares for Global Hawk Port
The NASA Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is concluding a month-long scientific mission over the Americas this week, studying questions that range from the dynamics of Earth’s crust to the carbon cycle. Continue reading
UAS Pilots Have Same Mental Health Rates as Jet Pilots
A new Pentagon study contrasting the mental-health concerns of pilots who actually climb into the cockpit – as opposed to military UAS pilots who sit at desks – shows that land-based pilots suffer 60% more mental-health maladies than their flying counterparts. Continue reading
NASA Flies Dragon Eye Unmanned Aircraft Into Volcanic Plume
NASA Earth science researchers last month traveled to Turrialba Volcano, near San Jose, Costa Rica, to fly an AeroVironment Dragon Eye unmanned aircraft system (UAS) — a small electric aircraft equipped with cameras and sensors — into the volcano’s sulfur dioxide plume and over its summit crater, to study Turrialba’s chemical environment. Continue reading
Festo BionicOpter Beats Dragonfly at its Own Game
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With the BionicOpter, Festo has applied the highly complex characteristics of the mechanics of dragonfly flight to an ultra-lightweight flying object at a technical level. Continue reading
“The Role of UAS Research is to Inform Policy”
“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be research,” quipped Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, Vice-President for Research at the University of Oklahoma and a member of the National Science Board, as he quoted Albert Einstein during the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Summit in Norman, Oklahoma, this week. Continue reading