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Category: drones – Page 30

New dual-resolution technique opens door for faster drone exploration

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new technique that could lead to faster and more efficient drone exploration.

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University has successfully developed a new dual-mapping technique that could help robots explore areas faster and more efficiently. By producing both a site’s high-and low-resolution map, this new technique enables robots to explore areas using only a fraction of the computing power typically needed for a similar task.

ROBOTICS INSTITUTE, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

More efficient exploration.

SpaceX breaks record for Falcon 9 with 16th launch of booster B1058

SpaceX’s veteran Falcon 9 booster, B1058, made its 16th launch on Sunday. This was the 216th successful mission for the series and a record-breaking event for the company.

On the night of July 9, 2023, SpaceX made space history with yet another successful Falcon 9 rocket launch. Blasting off from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the rocket carried a payload of Starlink satellites before landing its first stage booster on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

This is pretty much par for the course for SpaceX, but what is more incredible is that this was the 16th launch and landing of its B1058 Falcon 9 rocket booster. The company now hopes to be able to use the same booster… More.

Brandon Moser/iStock.

Russia successfully tests secret nuclear-powered “Poseidon” torpedo

Russia has successfully conducted tests on parts of its next-generation “Poseidon” nuclear-capable torpedo, according to reports.

Testing of reactors for the Poseidon unmanned nuclear-powered underwater drones shows “their operability and safety have been confirmed,” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on June 23. The report was also shared on Russian-language social media channels.

“They are ready to work as intended,” the Kremlin-backed outlet quoted an unnamed source “in the military-industrial complex.” The first “sea tests” are scheduled for this summer.

Texas Fourth of July Drone Show Sets Guinness World Record

Sky Elements Drone Shows set a Guinness World Record for its Fourth of July drone show in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. Sky Elements Drone Shows produced 40 shows during the extended holiday weekend using more than LED-equipped 10,000 drones, including 1,002 just at the show in Texas.

The show near Dallas set the record for the largest aerial sentence formed by multirotor drones and the 10-minute display illustrated critical moments in American history through precisely choreographed movements.

Swiss Firm RigiTech Enables Drone Delivery—Without a Landing or Takeoff

Wind turbine maintenance is an important yet unheralded task. But drones have arrived to spice things up.

RigiTech is a Swiss drone manufacturer and operator boasting some of the most extensive beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight authorizations in the industry. And it just completed a landmark test of its Eiger delivery system, flying spare parts to the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm, located 20 sm (17 nm) off the coast of Denmark. But there’s a catch—the drones didn’t need to land.

The tests marked the rollout of RigiTech’s prototype precision dropping system, which autonomously releases cargo from a few feet in the air when it detects the drone has reached its destination. That’s a game-changer in the case of offshore wind turbines, which typically do not have landing pads.

Prototype Drone Can Fly Into Burning Buildings, Forest Fires

A prototype drone developed at Imperial College London is able to withstand temperatures of up to 200°C for 10 minutes.

The so-called FireDrone (Opens in a new window) is designed to fly into burning buildings or forest fires and provide “crucial first-hand data” otherwise unavailable to first responders. For example, identifying where people are trapped in a burning building without fire fighters needing to perform a room-by-room search.

Drones take to the waves: Saildrones are getting data where people can’t

Science fiction often paints a terrifying picture of the future—think aliens decimating humanity, à la The War of the Worlds. But sometimes the future becoming the present can be pretty amazing—who doesn’t love successful space launches majestically catapulting humans skyward?

Or take Earth’s oceans, which are currently in the middle of a technological revolution that, outside of some very nerdy circles, has gone largely unnoticed.

“We’re at the cusp of a proliferation of lots of autonomous vehicles in the ocean,” said Alex De Robertis, a biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Things that were science fiction not so long ago are kind of routine now.” That includes saildrones, which look like oversized orange surfboards, each with a hard, carbon-fiber sail (called a wing) and a stash of scientific equipment.

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