Namco Bandai subsidiary CCP toys has launched its Nano-Falcon remote-controlled helicopter toy, which it claims is the world’s smallest. The Nano-Falcon, which is designed for indoor flight, has a body size of just 6.5 cm (2.5 in) long and weighs a scant 11 g (0.38 oz). The infrared controller, which takes four AA alkaline batteries, has a range of just 5 m (16 ft), which may be a good thing, lest you lose sight of it!
People told Andreas Raptopoulos it was a crazy idea when he and a few of his colleagues at Matternet started talking a couple of years ago about creating invisible highways for drones to deliver critical goods such as medicine in the developing world. First off, drones do not have the best reputation in certain parts of the developing world. But one billon people have to deal with lousy or nonexistent roads. And billions more in urban areas are tormented by traffic congestion. So Raptopoulos and his team forged on.
Quadrotor drones are doing a lot these days: they’re helping to save the elephants, rescue drowning victims and even deliver beer to concertgoers. While these important duties naturally suggest a certain level of independence, the drones aren’t entirely autonomous because they still require human pilots to control their maneuvers.
The most inaccurate component of a rifle is the human behind the trigger, but starting Wednesday hunters can turn to drone-inspired vision for a little help. Provided they have $22,000 on hand for a new rifle, that is.
Conventional quadrotors are what’s called underactuated robots, which means that they can move in more ways than they have independent control over. For example, they can happily yaw around to any angle you want while otherwise stationary, but if you ask them to pitch or roll, they can’t do it without also changing their position: if you try to roll a quadrotor left, the whole robot is going to fly left, and if you try to fly a quadrotor left, the whole robot is going to roll left.
Robotics researchers unveiled an electronic housefly on Thursday, one that can hover in air, flapping its wings to steer in a first demonstration of controlled artificial-insect flight.
Add one more to the list of career paths that are being obviated by robots: news delivery.
In Auvergne, a province in central France, residents get their daily news the old-fashioned way: through newspapers. But the delivery of said newspapers, apparently, will soon be executed with the help of high tech — because it’ll be done with the help of drones.
The dragonfly is quite the show off when it comes to flying. It can hover in mid-air, maneuver in all directions, and glide without so much as a beat of its wings. After succeeding in capturing the essence of a herring gull with the SmartBird, the folks over at German pneumatic and electric automation company Festo challenged themselves with the creation of a robotic addition to the dragonfly family – the BionicOpter.
When Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta lifted the military’s ban on women in combat in January, some critics revived a long-standing argument against such a move—namely, that women are no match for the physical demands of combat, and will endanger fellow soldiers’ lives. “There are certain anatomical facts about upper-body strength,” George Will said. “It’s relevant.” Just how relevant is debatable, for a couple reasons.
National privacy laws aren’t ready to handle the 10,000 commercial drones predicted to be flying around in US airspace by 2020, nor the surveillance drones that some local police and US law enforcement agencies are using already and that many more are seeking. That’s the conclusion voiced by US Senators and various expert witnesses during a hearing on domestic drone usage this morning.
The US Air Force is developing bug-sized drones that will be able to fly, crawl, perch and hover while performing unprecedented surveillance tasks and carrying out deadly targeted missions.
British troops in Afghanistan are now using 10-centimeter-long 16-gram spy helicopters to survey Taliban firing spots. The UK Defense Ministry plans to buy 160 of the drones under a contract worth more than $31 million.
The remote-controlled PD-100 PRS aircraft, dubbed the Black Hornet, is produced by Norwegian designer Prox Dynamics. The drone is a traditional single-rotor helicopter, scaled down to the size of a toy. British troops use the drones for reconnaissance missions, sending them ahead to inspect enemy positions.
According to new information obtained from the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO), law enforcement there has relied on unmanned aerial drones for surveillance purposes since as early as 2009.
Investigative journalism portal MuckRock.com has filed several Freedom of Information Act requests with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Department and has just begun publishing a number of documents they’ve received regarding the agency’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones.
Ex-iRobot founder Helen Greiner’s new company, CyPhy Works, has been doing something secret involving drones for the last several years, and as of today, we’ve found out what it is: UAVs that can operate for “unlimited” amounts of time. It’s not some sort of fancy fuel cell or wireless power transfer technology; rather, if you look closely at the image above, you’ll see that CyPhy’s UAVs are using a new solution that is actually very old: an unbroken, continuous cable that connects the UAV to its ground station at all times.
A small insect or a mosquito over your ear may now be much more than simply annoying. Those could easily be micro drones which now come in a swarm of bug-sized flying spies.
In an effort to create a hard-to-detect surveillance drone that will operate with little or no direct human supervision in out of the way and adverse environments, researchers are mimicking nature.
