The future is here and this is not a butterfly on your wall, as Israeli drones are getting tiny. Their latest project – a butterfly-shaped drone weighing just 20 grams - the smallest in its range so far – can gather intelligence inside buildings.
Posts tagged "drones"
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Spy-Butterfly: Israel developing insect drone for indoor surveillance →
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US selling combat drones to undisclosed countries →
The unmanned aerial vehicle industry is expected to bring in billions for domestic drone makers over the next few years. Where are the robotic aircraft manufacturers sending their stealth spy plans though? They aren’t saying.
The American Independent reports that Texas’ Vanguard Defense Industries, a US Defense Department contractor that outfits the Pentagon with unmanned aerial drones, has inked agreements with several overseas governments. According to the Independent, Vanguard is expected to see most of their profits in the next year occur from selling airships to foreign nations. Just exactly who is on the receiving end — and to the tune of how many crafts — remains a mystery.
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sFly Quadrotors Navigate Outdoors All By Themselves →
Quadrotors are famous for being able to pull all sorts of crazy stunts, but inevitably, somewhere in the background of the amazing video footage of said crazy stunts you’ll notice the baleful red glow of a Vicon motion tracking system. Now, we don’t want to call this cheating or anything, but we’re certainly looking forward to the day when quadrotors can do this outside of a lab, and the sFly project is helping to make this happen.
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US defends drone use for targeted killing →
A top US official has defended as legal and ethical its use of drone strikes to target terrorism suspects.
The officials comments on Monday by White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan was the most direct acknowledgement yet of the clandestine programme.
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Drones to soar over US and Canada sooner than thought? →
Non-military agencies have been gearing up to get unmanned drones in the sky across America, and now it looks like those controversial aircraft will soon be heading north, as well.
Not only are surveillance drones expected to soar in droves across American airspace in the not-so-distant future, but now it has been confirmed that authorities in Canada have successfully followed through with test flights of the unmanned aircraft for their own use.
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FAA Releases Lists of Drone Certificates—Many Questions Left Unanswered →
This week the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally released its first round of records in response to EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for information on the agency’s drone authorization program. The agency says the two lists it released include the names of all public and private entities that have applied for authorizations to fly drones domestically. These lists—which include the Certificates of Authorizations (COAs), issued to public entities like police departments, and the Special Airworthiness Certificates (SACs), issued to private drone manufacturers—show for the first time who is authorized to fly drones in the United States.
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Navy's Robot Helicopters Will Automatically Spot Pirates →
Helicopter drones that have already helped catch cocaine smugglers at sea could soon get much smarter about hunting modern-day pirates. The U.S. Navy plans to upgrade its robotic Fire Scouts with electronic “brains” that are able to automatically recognize small pirate boats spotted through 3D laser imaging.
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Drone use in the U.S. raises privacy concerns
Unmanned aerial vehicles, a key weapon in the hunt for terrorists overseas, are coming to America. In February, President Barack Obama signed a bill that opens U.S. airspace to thousands of these unmanned aircraft.
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Drones in American airspace need to be regulated →
President Obama signed a sweeping aviation bill in February that will open American airspace to “unmanned aircraft systems,” more commonly known as drones. Much of the recent discussion about the coming era of domestic drones, which will include those operated by companies and individuals, has been focused on privacy questions. However, drone proliferation also raises another issue that has received far less attention: the threat that they could be used to carry out terrorist attacks.
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TacoCopter – Tacos Delivered Straight to Your Home With GPS Guided Quadcopters →
Quadcopters plus tacos plus a delivery service equals a college student’s dream, and with it, rampant speculation across the web. Around since last July, the TacoCopter website suddenly grabbed the web’s attention days ago with its claim that they will take your order via a smartphone and deliver tacos straight to your location with GPS-guided, unmanned quadcopters.
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Command robot planes with a wave of your arms →
Controlling drone aircraft could one day be as simple as waving your arms.
Yale Song and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a way of controlling drones taxiing on a runway using gestures.
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Parrot AR Drone 2.0
This is a preview video of the new Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 - The new AR Drone Quadricopter features an HD (1280x720) camera. I was lucky enough to see a real-world preview of the device at CES 2012.
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Drones Will Be Admitted to Standard US Airspace By 2015 →
The skies are going to look very different pretty soon, and it’s been a long time coming. Congress finally passed a spending bill for the Federal Aviation Administration, allocating $63.4 billion for modernizing the country’s air traffic control systems and expanding airspace for unmanned planes within three and a half years.
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Robot warplane passes midair-refueling test →
A robotic warplane that can take off and land from U.S. Navy carriers by itself won’t do much good if it runs out of fuel in midair. That’s why the Navy recently completed flight tests to see how well the unmanned military drone could belly up to a flying fuel tanker.
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Pentagon: Fewer Soldiers, More Drones Will Save Money →
That buzz you hear above your head is the sound of the Pentagon cutting its budget.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta detailed today how the Obama administration plans to achieve $487 billion in cuts over the next decade, in part by reducing the number of ships, planes and troops, but continuing to fund elite special forces — and support technologies like unmanned drones.
