Lifeboat Foundation

Revolutionary ‘Lab-on-a-drone’ system detects airborne pollutants in real time.

In a significant stride towards better understanding and combating air pollution, researchers have unveiled an innovative “lab-on-a-drone” system. Published in the American Chemical Society’s journal, Analytical Chemistry.

Credit: Naypong/iStock.

Continue reading “Drones lead the way in real-time air quality checks” »

The British Army has just showcased its next-generation, jet-propelled, heavy-lift Hydra 400 drone at this year’s DSEI conference in London.

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) officially displayed its latest jet-propelled, heavy-lift drone at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) conference at the ExCeL center in London this September (2023). Called the Hydra 400, the British Army stand also featured the drone’s Aether mothership. A pioneering new generation of heavy-lift drones using hybrid propulsion technology (rotors and jet engines), the Hydra 400 is compact and portable, can be transported on a regular pickup truck, and can be prepared for flight in six minutes. It… More.

Continue reading “Meet the British Army’s new jet-propelled Hydra 400 drone” »

The US military and its contractors would be exempt.

Robots that are autonomous or semi-autonomous and carry weapons or offensive capabilities are often called armed robots. These robots can be employed in a variety of settings, including the military, law enforcement, industry, and security.

Today, many armed robots are controlled remotely by human operators who can keep a safe distance between themselves and the devices. This is particularly prevalent with military drones, as the operators control the aircraft and its weaponry from a distance, making the machines even more dangerous to civilians.

Continue reading “US state seeks to outlaw the use of armed robots” »

The new UAV features increased payload capacity, flight time, and a long-range resilient communications kit.

Drones have become an irreplaceable piece of technology to carry out various essential activities in fields like construction, defense, aerial photography, marketing, delivery, agriculture, and rescue, among others.

Firms are making massive strides in improving their versions of drones to cater to more operational requirements. To that extent, US-based Andruil Industries’ popular Ghost drone will get an update that features increased payload and longer flying time. Ghost is classified as a group 2 UAV, as they weigh less than 55 lbs (24 kg) and operate below 3,500 feet.

Get this tiny camera drone with tracking and AI technology for just $149.99. No remote needed when using the Air NEO app.

Processing on the fly gives extreme drones the edge.

The United States Air Force has completed a critical AI-controlled autonomous flight of its modified Osprey Mark III unmanned aerial system.

The USAF reports that the United States Air Force’s (USAF) “Osprey” Mark III unmanned aerial system (UAS) has completed its first fully autonomous test flight. Conducted on July 20, 2023, the test formed part of the USAF’s larger Autonomy, Data, and AI Experimentation (ADAx) Proving Ground effort for the program, specifically the USAF’s Autonomy Prime Environment for Experimentation or APEX, a subset of ADAx. The trial was conducted to evaluate and operationalize artificial intelligence and autonomy concepts to support warfighters on the evolving… More.

Continue reading “AI-controlled Osprey MK3 drone completes its maiden flight” »

The long-sought finding challenges scientists’ understanding of the strong nuclear force, and the AI that can beat human champions at drone racing.

In what can only bode poorly for our species’ survival during the inevitable robot uprisings, an AI system has once again outperformed the people who trained it. This time, researchers at the University of Zurich in partnership with Intel, pitted their “Swift” AI piloting system against a trio of world champion drone racers — none of whom could best its top time.

Swift is the culmination of years of AI and machine learning research by the University of Zurich. In 2021, the team set an earlier iteration of the flight control algorithm that used a series of external cameras to validate its position in space in real-time, against amateur human pilots, all of whom were easily overmatched in every lap of every race during the test. That result was a milestone in its own right as, previously, self-guided drones relied on simplified physics models to continually calculate their optimum trajectory, which severely lowered their top speed.

This week’s result is another milestone, not just because the AI bested people whose job is to fly drones fast, but because it did so without the cumbersome external camera arrays= of its predecessor. The Swift system “reacts in real time to the data collected by an onboard camera, like the one used by human racers,” an UZH Zurich release reads. It uses an integrated inertial measurement unit to track acceleration and speed while an onboard neural network localizes its position in space using data from the front-facing cameras. All of that data is fed into a central control unit — itself a deep neural network — which crunches through the numbers and devises a shortest/fastest path around the track.