Israel’s Sky Sapience company has delivered to the Israel Defense Forces’ Land Forces Command the first pre-production example of the HoverMast 100 – an autonomous, tethered hovercraft carrying a stabilized electro-optical payload. The system was delivered at a proving ground on the slopes of Mt. Carmel, where the company regularly tests the systems. Continue reading
FLIR Gets $137M Multi-Sensor Targeting Imager Contract from US Navy
U.S. Navy avionics experts needed multi-sensor electro-optical targeting systems for the UH-1 manned helicopter, the MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, and other unmanned vertical takeoff unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). They found their solution from FLIR Systems Inc.. Continue reading
$100 Home-Made QuadRotor Beams Wi-Fi
Robot enthusiast Adam Conway decided to build a “Wi-Fi hotspot” QuadRotor. Conway, a product manager at Aerohive, which provides corporate IT networks, used a quadrotor frame, some plywood, and an old router from work to built a UAS that can provide a Wi-Fi connection over the local LTE phone network. It can even link up to a corporate virtual private network for extra security. Continue reading
UAV-g September 4 – 6, 2013 at Rostock University, Germany
UAV-g 2013 is a follow up conference of the very successful UAV-g 2011 at ETH Zurich. The conference is organised with the focus on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Geomatics (UAV-g). Continue reading
Australian Animal Rights Group HexaCopter Controls Free Range Farms
Animal Liberation activists in Australia have dramatically stepped up their campaign against intensive livestock production, with their first official investigation using a hexacopter to capture aerial footage. Continue reading
Crowdfunding Sought for Open Source Programmable Flying Robot
A new Kickstarter campaign has been launched to create a programmable flying robot called Spiri. Spiri is a versatile, airborne Linux device with sensors, cameras, wifi, cloud support, development tools and more. Continue reading
Air National Guard Predator Helps Fight California Wildfire
As crews advanced against a giant wildfire around Yosemite National Park, fire commanders said they would maintain use of a Predator UAS to give them early views of any new flare-ups across in the remote and rugged landscape. Continue reading
Quadcopters in the Construction Industry
The talk of construction lately has been devices, which includes tablets, smartphones, and more. Now, there is another device flying—yes, flying—onto many construction jobsites, giving construction companies the opportunity to provide the owner with progress shots of the job – enter the ‘quadcopter.’ Continue reading