French Army Integrates Thales Spy’Ranger Drones and CAESAr Self-Propelled Howitzers

In January 2023, the 68th Régiment d’Artillerie d’Afrique (68RAA) conducted operational preparation for its deployment to Romania as part of the Aigle mission, Laurent Lagneau reports in Opex360. During this preparation, they utilized a firing campaign at Canjuers to train their drone section in fire support coordination. Continue reading →

Matternet Approved to Launch BVLOS Drone Delivery Operations in Berlin

Matternet, the developer of an urban drone delivery platform, announced that it has received approval from the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA), Germany’s Federal Aviation Office, to operate the Matternet M2 drone delivery platform beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) in the heart of Berlin. This marks the beginning of Berlin’s first ever BVLOS drone delivery network. Continue reading →

Johns Hopkins Researchers Study Autonomous Air Traffic Control for Drones

Ten years from now, we could be in for a new sort of traffic jam. In the near future, posits a new study led by two members of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, some 65,000 drones—weighing up to 55 pounds each, most of them programmed to operate without a pilot—will be “taking off, flying, or landing” per hour in what is so far largely uncontrolled lower U.S. airspace. Continue reading →

MIT Drones Navigate Unseen Environments with Liquid Neural Networks

Inspired by the adaptable nature of organic brains, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have introduced a method for robust flight navigation agents to master vision-based fly-to-target tasks in intricate, unfamiliar environments. The liquid neural networks, which can continuously adapt to new data inputs, showed prowess in making reliable decisions in unknown domains like forests, urban landscapes, and environments with added noise, rotation, and occlusion. Continue reading →