A Chinese company has unveiled a copy of the Black Hornet Nano. The tiny surveillance drone – named Fengniao, or Hummingbird – is just 17cm long and weighs 35 grams. Continue reading
Flying Drone Blanket for Future Cities
International design and innovation studio CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati is collaborating with the drone company Flyfire to prototype a new system for connecting and managing large swarms of drones. The new system revolves around a mesh – a “Flying Drone Blanket” that fits inside a suitcase – that allows fleets of quadcopters to take off simultaneously. Continue reading
FAA Selects Five Airports to Test C-UAS Systems
The Federal Aviation Administration has selected five host airports to evaluate technologies and systems that could detect and mitigate potential safety risks posed by unmanned aircraft. The effort is part of the agency’s Airport Unmanned Aircraft Systems Detection and Mitigation Research Program. Continue reading
Boeing Loyal Wingman Uncrewed Aircraft Completes First Flight
Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) have successfully completed the first test flight of the Loyal Wingman uncrewed aircraft. Continue reading
Skydio Joins the Unicorn Club
US drone manufacturer Skydio announced that it has raised $170 million in Series D funding led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Growth Fund. This brings total funding raised to over $340 million with a current valuation of over $1 billion. Continue reading
Elbit Systems Gets $300 M Hermes 900 Contract for Asia
Elbit Systems Ltd. announced that it was awarded an approximately $300 million contract by a country in Asia to provide Hermes 900 Unmanned Aircraft Systems . The contract will be performed over a period of five years. Continue reading
MIT Researchers’ New Generation of Tiny, Agile Drones
Insects can be remarkably acrobatic and resilient in flight. Those traits help them navigate the aerial world, with all of its wind gusts, obstacles, and general uncertainty. Such traits are also hard to build into flying robots, but MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has built a system that approaches insects’ agility. Continue reading
Textron Aerosonde at FTUAS Rodeo
Textron Systems is preparing to show off its vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial system in an Army drone rodeo at Fort Benning, Georgia, for companies competing to replace the service’s RQ-7B Shadow. Continue reading