Lifeboat Foundation

In simple terms, comparing previous autonomy standards with that of Exyn is like the difference between self-navigating a single, defined road versus uncharted terrain in unknown and unmapped territory. Unlike a car, however, a drone must be able to manoeuvre within three dimensions and pack all its intelligence and sensors onto a fraction of the total body size with severe weight restrictions.

“People have been talking about Level 4 Autonomy in driverless cars for some time, but having that same degree of intelligence condensed onboard a self-sufficient UAV is an entirely different engineering challenge in and of itself,” said Jason Derenick, CTO at Exyn Technologies. “Achieving Level 5 is the holy grail of autonomous systems – this is when the drone can demonstrate 100% control in an unbounded environment, without any input from a human operator whatsoever. While I don’t believe we will witness this in my lifetime, I do believe we will push the limits of what’s possible with advanced Level 4. We are already working on attaining Level 4B autonomy with swarms, or collaborative multi-robot systems.”

“There’s things that we want to do to make it faster, make it higher resolution, make it more accurate,” said Elm, in an interview with Forbes. “But the other thing we were kind of contemplating is basically the ability to have multiple robots collaborate with each other so you can scale the problem – both in terms of scale and scope. So you can have multiple identical robots on a mission, so you can actually now cover a larger area, but also have specialised robots that might be different. So, heterogeneous swarms so they can actually now have specialised tasks and collaborate with each other on a mission.”

Welcome to the rapidly advancing world of autonomous weapons — the cheap, highly effective systems that are revolutionizing militaries around the world. These new unmanned platforms can make U.S. forces much safer, at far lower cost than aircraft carriers and fighter jets. But beware: They’re being deployed by our potential adversaries faster than the Pentagon can keep up, and they increase the risk of conflict by making it easier and less bloody for the attacker.

Artificial intelligence and drones are transforming the battlefield into something that looks more like a video game than hand-to-hand combat. It could save lives — but also increase the risk of combat.

Oh, joy. You can take the drone out of 2020, but you can’t take the 2020 out of the drone.

A “lethal” weaponized drone “hunted down a human target” without being told to for the first time, according to a UN report seen by the New Scientist.

The March 2020 incident saw a KARGU-2 quadcopter autonomously attack a human during a conflict between Libyan government forces and a breakaway military faction, led by the Libyan National Army’s Khalifa Haftar, the Daily Star reported.

Continue reading “A rogue killer drone ‘hunted down’ a human target without being instructed to, UN report says” »

As a photographer, adding a DJI Mavic Mini to my gear locker felt like a final puzzle piece. I know I’m not alone in this feeling as many of my fellow photographer friends became pilots, as well, in the last year. But this doesn’t mean that we use our flying cameras just for drone photography and videography.

One reason for this slight phenomenon is an increase in client expectations. Reducing the skills of a photographer to just someone with lots of gear, there’s an assumption that videography is available for the asking. While I have invested in video gear like lights, a gimbal, clamps, arms, microphones and stands, my DJI Mavic Mini is up there at the top as a piece of video gear on offer. I previously wrote about my personal intro to drone life. Here are some ways that you, as a professional or hobbyist photographer, can find value in adding a drone to your bag of gear. And tricks.

While every photographer possesses video shooting capabilities in their DSLRs, it may be easier to use a drone as your first video shooting tool. One thing that DJI has done with their drones is made them out-of-the-box-ready to use. As opposed to figuring out which lens or menu settings to use, any DJI drone can capture stunning video on your first flight.

Last month, the United States Air Force successfully test flew an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called Skyborg, operating on an autonomous hardware/software suite, for the very first time.

The military aims for this UAV to fuel collaboration among manned and unmanned aircraft. For its first test run, the Skyborg suite flew aboard a Kratos UTAP-22 Mako air vehicle in the first step of what’s known as the Autonomous Attritable Aircraft Experimentation Campaign.

By and large, the US Air Force Research Laboratory seeks a UAV solution that can carry out all of the functions of a manned aerial vehicle but also with the option of manned operation.

Engineering A Safer World For Humans With Self Driving Cars, Drones, and Robots — Dr. Missy Cummings PhD, Professor, Duke University, Director, Humans and Autonomy Laboratory, Duke Engineering.

Dr. Mary “Missy” Cummings, is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the Pratt School of Engineering, at Duke University, the Duke Institute of Brain Sciences, and is the Director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory and Duke Robotics.

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“Never, never ask me for a shortcut.” her mom said while she was growing up.

MiMi Aung (born 1968) is a Burmese 🇲🇲 American engineer and project manager at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

She is the lead engineer on the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, the first extraterrestrial aircraft which landed on Mars today.

Continue reading “There are no shortcuts when you build a drone destined for Mars” »

These 3821 drones put on an incredible light show.

Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, is an innovative conservation biologist, who is Founder and President of the non-profit Amazon Biodiversity Center, the renowned Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, and the person who coined the term “biological diversity”.

Dr. Lovejoy currently serves as Professor in the department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University, and as a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation based in Washington, DC.

Continue reading “Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, Founder / President, Amazon Biodiversity Ctr — Snr. Fellow, United Nations Fnd” »