Pipistrel Aircraft has announced the successful completion of the first hover flight for its Nuuva V300, a hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aircraft designed for long-range logistics and specialized defense operations.

The milestone brings the company closer to deploying its autonomous cargo drone, which promises to revolutionize aerial deliveries with a 600-pound payload capacity and a 300-nautical-mile range.

The Nuuva V300 represents a leap forward in hybrid-electric propulsion, combining eight battery-powered electric motors for vertical takeoff with an internal combustion engine for forward flight. This dual-power system enhances fuel efficiency, minimizes maintenance costs, and provides greater operational flexibility. The aircraft’s design allows it to carry up to three Euro pallets (EPAL) through a nose-loading fuselage, offering a streamlined solution for cargo logistics, humanitarian aid, and defense applications.

Engineers have developed SUPER, a high-speed MAV, using 3D LiDAR and AI for real-time obstacle avoidance, cutting failure rates 35.9 times.

Drone show accidents highlight the challenges of maintaining safety in what engineers call “multiagent systems” — systems of multiple coordinated, collaborative, and computer-programmed agents, such as robots, drones, and self-driving cars.

Now, a team of MIT engineers has developed a training method for multiagent systems that can guarantee their safe operation in crowded environments. The researchers found that once the method is used to train a small number of agents, the safety margins and controls learned by those agents can automatically scale to any larger number of agents, in a way that ensures the safety of the system as a whole.

Researchers tested whether one person could command a robot swarm of drones and ground vehicles in complex missions.

Embodied AI enables robots and autonomous drones to interact with the real world, but how does it work?