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On April 19, 2016, FAA hosted the first day of its 2016 Unmanned Aircraft Systems Symposium. The purpose of the Symposium is to provide a forum for UAS industry and stakeholders to provide input to FAA decision-makers on topics related to UAS integration. Continue reading
Grant Jordan and his co-founders are announcing the public launch of SkySafe, a drone protection startup that wants to help facilities secure critical airspace. After graduating from MIT with a degree in computer science, Jordan spent four years at the United States Air Force acquiring a particular set of skills, skills that make him very dangerous to drones like this. “I worked on counter drone systems, and got a taste for everything out there. Giant laser systems, for example.” Continue reading
PrecisionHawk Inc. — a provider of aerial data and safety platforms for drones — announced that it has closed an $18 million round of funding with Verizon Ventures, a subsidiary of USAA, NTT Docomo Ventures, and Yamaha Motor with full participation from existing investors Intel Capital, Millennium Technology Value Partners and Indiana University’s Innovate Indiana Fund in an oversubscribed round.
The US Air Force’s next-generation multispectral camera, the UTC Aerospace Systems (UTAS) MS-177, has been successfully flown on the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems “Predator C” Avenger aircraft.
Aurora Flight Sciences announced that a subscale vehicle demonstrator (SVD) of its LightningStrike, Vertical Take-off and Landing Experimental Plane (VTOL x-plane) for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was successfully flown at a U.S. military facility.
A lack of regulation has been blamed for a drone hitting a British Airways passenger jet, as it emerged that police have failed to investigate 40 near-misses in the past year. Calls for action to mitigate the threat to passenger aircraft from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) came from Europe’s main regional airline trade group and others following an April 17 incident at London Heathrow Airport.
HMS Protector has been trialling small drones to help her negotiate the Antarctic ice for the first time. The survey ship, which has just completed her third stint around the frozen continent this austral summer, has launched both a tiny quadcopter and a 3D-printed aircraft equipped with cameras.