Category: drones – Page 163
Hmmm; could I set up a subcontracting firm full of top gun gamers/ pilots working with the US DoD? We see privatized Army, etc. And, with drones it’s more about the skills of a gamer meets military strategy as a former pilot. Maybe some possibility with the right funding and clearance checks in place on drone pilots.
But in many ways this is not like most other aircraft. The MQ-9 Reaper is the U.S. Air Force’s most advanced drone or “remotely piloted aircraft” in use today.
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POSTECH has created a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that not only adds life to drones but can also replace lithium-ion batteries in smartphones.
Battery life. Two words that can turn anyone who owns an electronic device into a total wreck. But scientists at POSTECH may have found the solution to prevent you from having a panic attack each time you see your device almost out of juice.
Prof. Gyeong Man Choi and his Ph.D. student Kun Joong Kim have developed a miniaturized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) powerful enough to extend the flying time of drones to more than an hour. And that’s just the start.
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A few weeks ago DJI unveiled its newest drone, the Phantom 4, the first craft to offer robust obstacle avoidance at a price the average consumer can afford. It relied on computer vision to power its autonomous flight, and since DJI had shown off this kind of tech before, we assumed that all the hardware on the Phantom 4 was homegrown, or backed by a giant like Intel. But today the chipmaker Movidius announced that its latest offer, the Myriad 2, was at the center of the onboard processor powering the Phantom 4’s incredible new abilities.
As it turns out this isn’t the first time Movidius has partnered with a big name to develop cutting edge technology. Back in 2014 its first chip, the Myriad 1, was revealed as the brains inside of Google’s first generation of Project Tango tablets. After a decade toiling in relative obscurity, the small 125 person company is suddenly poised to emerge as a leader at the intersection of several major markets — from drones to phones to virtual reality — which are looking for ways to enable cheap, power-efficient computer vision.
“The company was founded in late 2005, so we’ve had a long gestation,” says CEO Remi El-Ouazzane with a laugh. In its early years it found some business converting old movies into 3D, helping to shore up content offerings for the 3D TV market that never took off. In 2010 its chips were put to use as an engine for 3D rendering, but it was competing with plenty of established chip makers in that market. It wasn’t until 2013, and its partnership with Tango, that the company realized how widespread the application of computer vision could be, and focused in on optimizing for what it believed would be the next wave of devices.
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking techies to help fight terrorism. The US military, after spending decades in a struggle to defend itself against improvised weapons, is now inviting inventors to get explosively creative.
Whatever device this article is currently being read on, in the wrong hands, could become a weapon. Technology such as USBs, off-the-shelf software and cell phones have all been deployed against US or US-backed forces. Now the US hopes to return the favor, according to Ars Technica.
What makes fighting against improvised weapons so difficult is that they can be made from almost anything, from non-military drones to gardening tools. In its announcement, DARPA encouraged inventors to use anything from widely-available commercial technology to “highly specialized, domain-specific technology such as construction, salvage, or surveying equipment.”
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Tree Planting Drones
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