Amphibious Drones can Help Fight Wildfires

In the plains of central Spain, just about 90 minutes south of Madrid, a firefighting robot is taking flight. With two engines, a smooth underbelly, and a construction straight out of World War II’s Atlantic theater, the Singular Aircraft Flyox is a drone designed as an aerial workhorse on land and water. It is one of a growing number of drones that may be called to fight forest fires as aerial tankers, augmenting or replacing crewed aircraft in the process. Continue reading →

Soft actuators help MIT power nano drones

MIT researchers have demonstrated diminutive drones that can zip around with bug-like agility and resilience, which could eventually perform these tasks. The soft actuators that propel these microrobots are very durable, but they require much higher voltages than similarly-sized rigid actuators. The featherweight robots can’t carry the necessary power electronics that would allow them fly on their own. Continue reading →

Woolpert Gets Patent for High-Altitude, High-Resolution Topographic and Bathymetric Lidar Technologies

Woolpert has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for its “Airborne Topo-Bathy Lidar System and Methods Thereof.” A lidar sensor system was developed by a multidisciplinary research and development team incorporating these technologies that enable the collection of high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data at a higher altitude, resulting in a broader swath than previously developed lidar systems. Continue reading →

GA-ASI Avengers Autonomously Send Fused Air Threat Data to Command Center

On November 18, 2021, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) used two company-owned Avenger Unmanned Aircraft Systems, each equipped with a Lockheed Martin Legion Pod, to send long-range air threat data captured passively and fused by an advanced sensor algorithm to a Command Center. Continue reading →