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Archive for the ‘drones’ category: Page 151

Jul 22, 2016

Facebook’s solar-powered internet drone takes flight

Posted by in categories: drones, internet, solar power, sustainability

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.

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Jul 22, 2016

Facebook Test-Flies Drone to Bring Internet to Remote Areas

Posted by in categories: drones, internet, solar power, sustainability

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.

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Jul 21, 2016

Amazon wants to turn street lights and even church steeples into drone docking stations

Posted by in category: drones

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.

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Jul 21, 2016

Facebook Heads For The Clouds With Its Internet-Streaming, Solar-Powered Aquila Drone

Posted by in categories: drones, internet, robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

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.

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Jul 21, 2016

Facebook’s flock of drones

Posted by in categories: drones, internet, solar power, sustainability

Facebook plans to use solar-powered drones to extend internet access to remote parts of the planet.

Read the latest on these ambitious plans: http://bbc.in/29WgEvF

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Jul 21, 2016

Facebook plans to beam fast Internet to remote areas using lasers

Posted by in categories: drones, internet, solar power, sustainability

So far the system can be used to receive signals carrying data at rates of up to 2.1 gigabits per second, though the team claims it could go faster if it were built to absorb infrared, rather than blue, light.

It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t the first piece of hardware to emerge from the Connectivity Lab. Famously, it’s been working on a solar-powered drone to deliver Internet access. That particular project is progressing slowly, though, so despite the fact that the team behind the new laser device plans to test it in a real-world setting, there’s likely still much development ahead before it’s used widely.

The social network is, however, busy pursuing plenty of other projects to take data to the sticks. Most notably, its Telecom Infra Project will use open-source cellular networks to achieve similar results. That way, you see, anyone will be able to sign up on Facebook.

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Jul 20, 2016

World’s Fastest Consumer Drone Flies Up To 85 MPH

Posted by in category: drones

#Drone enthusiasts! New store-bought Teal modular will become the “drone of your dreams,” new #tech could compete in #DroneRaces.

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Jul 20, 2016

Killer ‘legobots’ are coming: US Military to build brickbots

Posted by in categories: computing, drones, military

Plug and play is preparing to launch.


DARPA hopes to shrink traditional military machines into single ‘chiplets’ to build a library of components to aid everything from smart drone building to instant language translation. Shown, an artist’s impression of the components that could be shrunk onto a single chip.

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Jul 19, 2016

Is MIND-CONTROL the future of warfare?

Posted by in categories: computing, drones, military, neuroscience, robotics/AI

Although BMI is nothing new; I never get tired of highlighting it.


Now the group has come up with a way for one person to control multiple robots.

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Jul 18, 2016

Researcher builds technology to control drone swarms with his mind

Posted by in categories: computing, drones, neuroscience, robotics/AI, security

About 5 years ago a friend of mine at Microsoft (Mitch S.) had a vision of making a new security model around drone swarms and a form of BMI technology. Glad to see the vision come true.


Scientists have discovered how to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain, an advance that can help develop swarms of search and rescue drones that are controlled just by thought.

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