Lifeboat Foundation

Millions of commercial drones may be in the air by 2020. This could make near-instant airborne delivery a reality. But what are the hidden costs? A multidisciplinary team of RAND experts is looking into it: http://r.rand.org/37ch

Leaves are kind of like nature’s power plants, converting incoming sunlight into energy for the plant to thrive on. Inspired by the real thing, scientists have previously created artificial leaves that function in much the same way as their natural counterparts to produce electricity and even liquid fuels. Now a team at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is using a similar system to produce chemicals, which could one day lead to solar-powered “mini-factories” that can produce drugs, pesticides and other chemicals almost anywhere.

To mimic the light-capturing molecules in leaves, the researchers turned to luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), materials seen in solar-harvesting window technology and used to catch and amplify laser beams carrying data in Facebook’s drone-mounted internet projec t. These LSCs absorb incoming light, convert it to specific wavelengths and then guide the photons to the edges of the device.

Continue reading “Artificial leaf could make a medicinal mini-factory” »

From navigating turbulence, to sleeping midflight, to soaring without a sound, animals’ flight adaptations are helping scientists design better flying robots.

Airborne drones and the animals they mimic are featured in 18 new studies published online Dec. 15 in the journal Interface Focus. This special issue is intended “to inspire development of new aerial robots and to show the current status of animal flight studies,” said the issue’s editor, David Lentink, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University in California.

Though humans have been building flying machines since the 18th century, these new studies revealed that there is still much to be learned from looking closely at how birds, insects and bats take flight, keep themselves aloft and maneuver to safe landings. [Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature].

Continue reading “New Flying Robots Take Cues From Airborne Animals” »

New DARPA project aims to build a universal remote for hundreds of tiny drones.

The future is here… or is it?

With so many articles proliferating the media space on how humans are at the cusp of full AI (artificial intelligence), it’s no wonder that we believe that the future — which is full of robots and drones and self-driven vehicles, as well as diminishing human control over these machines — is right on our doorstep.

But are we really approaching the singularity as fast as we think we are?

Continue reading “Why we are still light years away from full artificial intelligence” »

CEO Jeff Bezos said the company successfully delivered its first package to a customer in the Cambridge area of England in 13 minutes.

Amazon said Wednesday it made its first customer delivery by drone, putting the online retailer in the lead to use drones as a new delivery method.

One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. That’s because the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. The case in point: Northrop Grumman’s new Tern, a drone designed to do everything armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers can, but to do it flying from small ships or rugged scraps of land – i.e., no runway needed.

“No one has flown a large, unmanned tailsitter before,” Brad Tousley, director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Tern’s primary funder, said in a news release. The key word there is “unmanned.”

Continue reading “Tern Tailsitter Drone: Pilot Not Included” »

Architect Saúl Ajuria Fernández designed Urban Droneport, an hub for delivery drones, as part of his master’s degree at Universidad de Alcalá.