You might be rolling your eyes as you see the drone take off to the skies and hover over the Australian coastline, camera angled straight down towards the glistening turquoise water. “Another TikTok influencer trying to get the perfect shot,” you grumble to yourself. But if you look closely at the pilot, you’ll notice they’ve got a sign next to them that says “Keep Clear” in bright yellow and red letters. This is no TikTok influencer.
It’s an Australian surf lifesaver, using the above drone to spot sharks at the beach before they get too close to swimmers like yourself.
Australian surf lifesavers are increasingly using drones to spot sharks at the beach before they get too close for comfort. Can AI help them with identifying dangerous species?
At CES 2023, industry experts weighed in on why drones should be your next delivery vehicle.
Drone deliveries could help reduce unnecessary deaths on roads and improve the environment, industry experts explained Friday.
For example, delivering that hamburger helper via a drone versus someone getting in their car and driving to a place…
Ernir eyjolfsson/anadolu agency via getty images.
At the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) representative Abigail Smith explained that her organization looks to safety as its north star. When it comes to delivering goods with unmanned flying machines, the technology has the potential to improve safety over current solutions.
“Five strangers were pulled together” in an engineering challenge to find a solution to a real-world problem.
Engineering researchers of an innovative academy program have designed a Submersible Remotely Operated Vehicle (SROV) in a span of six weeks after accepting the U.K. Navy’s challenge.
“I was skeptical at first that we could pull off such an ambitious project within the timeframe,” said Dylan Brennan, project team lead, a nuclear graduate working for Jacobs.
Co.lab.engineering.
The five young engineers, who were part of the first cohort of the newly launched Co-Lab Engineering Academy, presented a concept design of their “ScrubMarine,” a submersible cleaning drone.
Amazon has launched drone delivery trials in a couple of new locations in California and Texas.
David Carbon, vice president of Prime Air Amazon, announced the development on LinkedIn. His post included a photo (below) showing one of its drones carrying a small box on the end of a tether.
“First deliveries from our new sites in Texas and California,” Carbon wrote in his post. “Couldn’t be prouder of the amazing people that make up Prime Air. These are careful first steps that we will turn into giant leaps for our customers over the next number of years.”
Robots and autonomous cars will have eyes that see much more than the human eye is capable of, a review of the growing field of meta-optics has found.
Meta-optics is advancing science and technology far beyond the 3,000-year-old optical paradigm that we rely on for the visual human-machine interface, such as through cameras in our mobile phones, the lenses in microscopes, drones, and telescopes. Optical components are the technology bottleneck that meta-optics aims to transform, bringing the stuff of science-fiction stories into everyday devices.
The field, which blossomed after the early 2000s thanks to the conceptualization of a material with negative refractive index that could form a perfect lens, has grown rapidly in the last five years and now sees around 3,000 publications a year.
The transportation system in the future will be very different from our current system. We will see flying cars, self-driving cars, passenger drones, hyperloop one system that is projected to reach a top speed of 760 mph (1,220 km/h) and with Starship and the Super Heavy Rocket, most journeys will taking less than 30 minutes, with access to anywhere in the world in an hour or less.
Starship-Super Heavy Earth to Earth : With Starship and the Super Heavy Rocket, most of what people consider to be long distance trips would be completed in less than half an hour. In addition to vastly increased speed, one great benefit about traveling in space, outside of Earth’s atmosphere, is the lack of friction as well as turbulence and weather. Consider how much time we currently spend traveling from one place to another. Now imagine most journeys taking less than 30 minutes, with access to anywhere in the world in an hour or less. It’s designed to service all Earth orbit needs as well as the Moon and Mars. This two-stage vehicle—composed of the Super Heavy Rocket (booster) and Starship (ship).
Hyperloop One : The Hyperloop is a new mode of transportation that moves freight and people quickly, safely, on-demand and direct from origin to destination. Passengers or cargo are loaded into the hyperloop vehicle and accelerate gradually via electric propulsion through a low-pressure tube. The vehicle floats above the track using magnetic levitation and glides at airline speeds for long distances due to ultra-low aerodynamic drag. Hyperloop One systems will be built on columns or tunneled below ground to avoid dangerous grade crossings and wildlife. It’s fully autonomous and enclosed, eliminating pilot error and weather hazards.
Underground Tunnels Transportation : To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won’t fall on your head. A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). Fast to dig, low cost tunnels would also make Hyperloop adoption viable and enable rapid transit across densely populated regions, enabling travel from New York to Washington DC in less than 30 minutes.
Pop. Up Next : At the heart of the Pop. Up Next concept is a simple two-seat passenger cabin that can travel one of two ways. The simpler and more conventional route involves attaching to a 60-kW (80-hp) electric powered sled and assuming the role of a self-driving car. Top speed is listed at 100 km/h (62 mph) and it would rely on a 15-kWh battery for a 130-km (81-mi) range. Pop. Up’s modus operandi is simple: passengers plan their journey and book their trip via an easy-to-use app. The system automatically suggests the best transport solution — according to user knowledge, timing, traffic congestion, costs, ridesharing demands — joining either the air or ground module or other means of transportation to the passenger capsule, and following passengers’ preferences and needs.
The drone is highly maneuverable, with a flight time of five hours and an operational altitude of 35,000 feet, as per the defense company.
Turkey’s first jet-powered uncrewed aerial combat vehicle (UCAV), Kizilelma, “Red Apple,” has completed its inaugural flight, as per the country’s lead defense manufacturer.
The makers of this new combat ariel vehicle, Baykar (a Turkish defense company), posted the test results via social media on Wednesday.
These Remote Carriers will supplement manned aircraft and support pilots in their tasks and missions.
A group led by Airbus has successfully tested the launch and operation of a Remote Carrier flight test demonstrator, a modified Airbus Do-DT25 drone, from a flying A400M.
The project, jointly developed with Germany’s Bundeswehr, the German Aerospace Center DLR, and German companies SFL and Geradts, aims to supplement the upcoming European sixth-generation fighter jet, part of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS). “Multiplying the force and extending the range of unmanned systems will be one of the future roles of Airbus’ military transport aircraft in the FCAS,” said in a release.
“Eureka 1” is an innovative underwater drone that can collect rare minerals from the seafloor without causing too much damage to the ecosystem.
Impossible Metals has announced in a press release that “Eureka 1,” its first autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), has finished its first field test by carefully choosing pebbles to collect in an aquatic environment. This is a big step for the company, which wants to move toward a green economy by finding better ways to mine essential minerals.
This will be important because the demand for these metals will keep going up for the next few decades.
Impossible Metals.
All of this puts a massive strain on mining activities and will lead to a rise in demand for traditional and new ways to get raw materials.
