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Category: drones – Page 72

The recent eruptions in Iceland, vividly captured through dramatic drone footage, have drawn public attention to the immense power of volcanoes. Beautiful though they are, and mesmerizing to watch, they are also deadly.

History has recorded eruptions so spectacular they’ve never been forgotten. These include Krakatoa in 1883, whose explosion was heard around the world and Mount Tambora, which resulted in famines across the northern hemisphere.

But perhaps the most famous of all is the eruption of Vesuvius in Italy, in AD79, which sealed the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum beneath layers of ash.

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We wrote about DroneUp’s drone delivery of Coke with Coffee to residents in Coffee, GA – but how exactly did that delivery work? The A2Z Rapid Delivery System allowed packages to be delivered without landing the drone – a method that solves a lot of problems in drone delivery.

CA-based A2Z Drone Delivery, LLC, has developed a patented tethered freefall drone delivery mechanism, the Rapid Delivery System (RDS1) used by DroneUp® for the project with Walmart and Coke. The RDS1 system lowers the delivery to the ground by tether – which means that homeowners don’t have to worry about a noisy landing or the potential for a landing drone to hit obstacles on its way down. “The RDS1 was chosen for its rapid delivery capabilities which reduced time-on-station to just 30 seconds per delivery, while minimizing intrusive rotor noise and limiting the window for risk to people on the ground,” says an A2Z press release.

“For our partners at DroneUp to put their trust in our system was the best proof of concept that we could imagine and was a memorable benchmark for our whole team,” said Aaron Zhang, founder of A2Z Drone Delivery, LLC. “The unique capabilities of the RDS1 were tailor-made for this type of residential delivery where our tethered freefall mechanism can accurately and quickly deposit payloads while hovering far from people, homes, trees and utility wires.”

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Satellite delivery isn’t exactly cutting-edge tech these days. Lately it feels like SpaceX is doing that every week. Liftoff usually starts with a ground-based rocket, which is expensive and time-consuming to launch. Aevum believes its massive Ravn X drone can do it better, for less money.

At 80 feet long and 18 feet tall, the Ravn X is the world’s biggest drone, says Aevum. Driven by Aevum’s proprietary software, the drone would fly itself to a specified altitude, where it would launch a rocket to deliver a payload of small satellites to low Earth orbit. Click the video above for more on the delivery process.

The launch system is 70% reusable, Aevum said. CEO Jay Skylus hopes to get that close to 100%.

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Coventry, a city in the United Kingdom, will play host to the world’s first airport for electric flying cars and delivery drones. Urban Air Port will build the Air One transport hub next to the city’s Ricoh Arena and will open later this year. It’ll be used to transport cargo and hopefully even people later across cities.

The city was specifically chosen by the company for its relatively central location and also because it’s a historically prominent location for both the aerospace and automobile industries. The project received a £1.2 million grant after winning the Government’s Future Flight Challenge, and the city is now in an urban air mobility partnership that’s backed by the UK Government.

“Cars need roads. Trains need rails. Planes need airports. eVTOLs will need Urban Air Ports. Over 100 years ago, the world’s first commercial flight took off, creating the modern connected world. Urban Air Port will improve connectivity across our cities, boost productivity and help the UK take the lead in a whole new clean global economy. Flying cars used to be a futuristic flight of fancy. Air-One will bring clean urban air transport to the masses and unleash a new airborne world of zero-emission mobility,” said Ricky Sandhu, Urban Air Port’s founder and executive chairman.

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Circa 2010

About 48 kilometers off the eastern coast of the United States, scientists from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, peered over the side of a small research vessel, the Arabella. They had just launched RU27, a 2-meter-long oceanographic probe shaped like a torpedo with wings. Although it sported a bright yellow paint job for good visibility, it was unclear whether anyone would ever see this underwater robot again. Its mission, simply put, was to cross the Atlantic before its batteries gave out.

Unlike other underwater drones, RU27 and its kin are able to travel without the aid of a propeller. Instead, they move up and down through the top 100 to 200 meters of seawater by adjusting their buoyancy while gliding forward using their swept-back wings. With this strategy, they can go a remarkably long way on a remarkably small amount of energy.

When submerged and thus out of radio contact, RU27 steered itself with the aid of sensors that registered depth, heading, and angle from the horizontal. From those inputs, it could dead reckon about where it had glided since its last GPS navigational fix: Every 8 hours the probe broke the surface and briefly stuck its tail in the air, which exposed its GPS antenna as well as the antenna of an Iridium satellite modem. This allowed the vehicle to contact its operators, who were located in New Brunswick, N.J., in the Rutgers Coastal Ocean Observation Lab, or COOL Room.

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Researchers have published a study revealing their successful approach to designing much quieter propellers.

The Australian research team used machine learning to design their propellers, then 3D printed several of the most promising prototypes for experimental acoustic testing at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s specialized ‘echo-free’ chamber.

Results now published in Aerospace Research Central show the prototypes made around 15dB less noise than commercially available propellers, validating the team’s design methodology.

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