Students at Queen’s University Belfast have created unmanned aircraft technology, capable of delivering relief to disaster zones. Teams were tasked with designing and building autonomously-controlled aircraft from scratch, which are capable of delivering two bottles of water and a medical kit to disaster victims using its own in-flight system. Continue reading
FAA Offers New Partnerships to Validate Key Drone Technologies
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will partner with qualified commercial companies who can match the agency’s $6 million pledge to perform vital drone integration safety work at the FAA’s UAS test sites. Continue reading
Airbus and Spanish Air Force to Develop Drone and AR Inspections for Military Aircraft
The Spanish Air Force has become the first air force worldwide to support the development of Airbus’ drone and augmented reality-based maintenance inspection services, with the aim of drastically reducing maintenance inspections for large military aircraft and increasing overall fleet availability. Continue reading
BAE Systems Gets $39M MQ-9 Sensor Contract
BAE Systems, Nashua, New Hampshire, has been awarded a not-to-exceed $39,459,120 undefinitized contract action for the France MQ-9 Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Sensor Pod effort. Continue reading
Evaluation of Remote ID at NUAIR
NUAIR (Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research) in collaboration with ANRA Technologies conducted an operational assessment of ANRA’s UTM technology for broadcast and network based remote identification (RID) of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) at the New York UAS Test Site located at Griffiss International Airport in Rome, NY. Continue reading
PULP Dronet – Nano-UAV Inspired by Insects
Researchers at ETH Zürich and the University of Bologna have recently created PULP Dronet, a 27-gram nano-size unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a deep learning-based visual navigation engine. Their mini-drone, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, can run aboard an end-to-end, closed-loop visual pipeline for autonomous navigation powered by a state-of-the-art deep learning algorithm. Continue reading
First US Destroyer Equipped with Laser Defense System
The Pearl Harbor-based USS Preble will be the first destroyer to be equipped with a high-energy laser to counter surface craft and unmanned aerial systems, according to a published report, with the Navy planning to one day use the powerful light beams to defend against Chinese or Russian cruise missiles. Continue reading
GA-ASI Gets $36M US Navy MQ-9 Service Contract
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Poway, California, has been awarded $36,467,263 for modification P00002 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-18-C-1063). This modification provides for nine months of Group 5 unmanned air system intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance services. Continue reading