Hunters from the 432nd Wing/432nd Air Expeditionary Wing and the Air-to-Ground Weapons System Evaluation Program team participated in the 2014 Combat Hammer Exercise May 12-15, 2014, to operationally assess and evaluate the reliability, maintainability, suitability, and accuracy of remotely piloted aircraft munitions. Continue reading
UAS Map Melting Glaciers in Himalayas
Scientists at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a Nepal-based research institute, and colleagues at Utrecht University in the Netherlands used unmanned aircraft systems to map the Lirung glacier in Nepal in 2013. Their results will appear in the July issue of the journal Remote Sensing of Environment. Continue reading
Luxury Hotel Delivers Champagne by QuadCopter
A luxury hotel is taking Champagne delivery to a whole new level with a soaring bottle service by quadcopter.The Mansion at Casa Madrona in California unleashed their state-of-the-art octo-copter earlier this month to deliver the residents precious bubbly. The service is specifically for guests staying in the hotel’s most luxurious suite – where nights start at $10,000. Continue reading
First Fixed Wing Unmanned Aerial Survey Over London
KaarbonTech has become the first company to receive a special permission from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to fly a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle within London airspace. The first flight, commissioned by The GeoInformation Group, took place over Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the home of the London 2012 Games. Continue reading
Skycatch Raises $3M from Investors Including Google for UAS for Energy Industry
The egg white UAS lifted off from its ground station at a hospital construction site here, hovered for an instant, then zoomed off, sounding like a five-pound bee as it buzzed around the cranes towering over the six-acre project. Capable of carrying a high-resolution camera and other sensors, the quadcopter, a helicopter with four rotors that resembles a spaceship from a 1950s science fiction movie, was flying in a demonstration of its ability to serve a potentially lucrative new market for UAS: the energy industry. Continue reading
UAS Mapping Trees in Finland
Mapping the trees in Finland’s forests sounds like a Herculean task – there are 30 billion of them, making it Europe’s most densely wooded nation. But for one start-up that’s just the warm-up act to its plan to use laser-equipped drones to shake up industry at large. From package deliveries to nuclear power plant examinations, the Helsinki-based Sharper Shape can see limitless possibilities for its system. Continue reading
Eurofighter Typhoon D-Day Salute
A Eurofighter Typhoon adorned with commemorative D-Day invasion stripes appearance at the IWM D-Day anniversary Air Show. Continue reading
Swarming UAS are the Future
Small unmanned aircraft operating in swarms can be a boon in post-disaster or search-and-rescue operations, but the current state of technology poses some problems, said Vijay Kumar, the UPS Foundation Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. Continue reading