Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: drones – Page 156

Where is PETA when you need them.

When we think of drones, we still often think primarily of their military uses, despite the fact that they’re increasingly becoming a part of our everyday lives. Drones serve an impressive range of roles in the military, commercial, public, and civilian sectors. They’re also becoming more and more affordable and accessible. If you’ve been to an open-air event with a decent crowd lately, there was probably at least one person there flying their personal drone around, taking aerial footage to upload to social media.

As something becomes more common, we tend to find more creative purposes for it. And there are definitely some people out there getting creative with drones, for better or for worse.

Read more

Dubbed the ‘Sea Hunter’, the 132ft ship is designed to travel thousands of miles out at sea without a single crew member on board.

The self driving warship has now completed its first trials — and passed with flying colours.

Experts say the vessel has the potential to revolutionise not only the military’s maritime service but also commercial shipping.

Read more

SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc (FB.O) said on Thursday it had completed a successful test flight of a solar-powered drone that it hopes will help it extend internet connectivity to every corner of the planet.

Aquila, Facebook’s lightweight, high-altitude aircraft, flew at a few thousand feet for 96 minutes in Yuma, Arizona, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his Facebook page. The company ultimately hopes to have a fleet of Aquilas that can fly for at least three months at a time at 60,000 feet (18,290 meters) and communicate with each other to deliver internet access.

Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) has also poured money into delivering internet access to under served areas through Project Loon, which aims to use a network of high-altitude balloons to made the internet available to remote parts of the world.

Read more

US social networking giant Facebook announced on Thursday a successful test of its solar-powered Aquila drone, which will beam Internet to people in remote areas.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Facebook has been working on Aquila Project with leading experts in aerospace and communication technologies, from NASA’s jet propulsion lab to a small UK firm that created one of the world’s longest flying solar-powered drones.

Read more

Hmmm.

Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service, if it ever gets off the ground, could one day use the top of street lights, cell towers, and even church steeples as docking stations for its flying machine.

The stations would serve as charging points for the drones, enabling them to stop off at multiple points for a battery boost thereby giving them a much greater flying range. Such a system could, in theory, open up pretty much the whole of the country to the possibility of drone delivery, as a single drone could hop from point to point on its way to an address.

The docking stations could also shelter the drones from harsh weather conditions that may develop after they leave the distribution center to begin their delivery run.

Read more

Tech now really moving into the clouds.

Although the world is increasingly connected through the internet, there are still four billion people or 60% of the world’s population who do not have such access. 1.6 billion of those people live in remote locations and do not have access to mobile broadband networks. Facebook Connectivity Lab just announced the first full-scale test flight of Aquila, a solar-powered airplane that can be used to bring affordable internet to isolated areas.

Aquila is a high-altitude, long-endurance, unmanned solar-powered airplane. It has a wingspan bigger than a Boeing 737 airplane but weighs hundreds of times less due to its carbon fiber frame. Many of the team members who contributed to the craft had previous experience at at NASA, Boeing, DARPA, Northrop Grumman, and the British Royal Air Force.

Read more