50035235
submission
garymortimer writes:
Hydra aims to develop a distributed undersea network of UUVs and UAVs able to operate independently for weeks or months at a time to complement manned ships, submarines, and aircraft as an alternate means of delivering various capabilities above, on, and below the ocean’s surface.
The UAV payload will feature encapsulated air vehicles that fit into the standard Hydra modular enclosure. The air vehicle payload that will be ejected from the mothership, float to the surface, launch, fly a minimum range, and conduct several different types of missions.
Undersea payloads will launch, dock, and recharge from the mothership and collect intelligence information. After their missions they will download information to the mothership, which will communicate it to command authorities.
49988039
submission
garymortimer writes:
Online forums suggest that there were actually three different operators flying at the recent Bull Run incident. Among them Digital Thunderdome, who apparently were not flying the incident aircraft but another lofting a Red Epic.
Flight over crowds should never occur and cannot be considered safe practice.
Earlier this year whilst filming in London for the UK version of the X Factor TV show a similar incident took place and was subject to a CAA safety notice. Unlike the UK, Europe, Canada and Australia the USA does not have regulations or safety systems in place for commercial civil UA operations. According to an FAA representative speaking to Patrick Egan of sUAS News at the recent AUVSI conference rules are due for public release and comment before 2013 is out.
49677997
submission
garymortimer writes:
Participants flying unmanned aerial vehicles (aka drones, RC airplanes, etc.) have developed a set of best practices for flying at Black Rock City this year.
The best practices came out of a July 17“Drone Summit” at Burning Man headquarters that had 40 in attendance and an estimated 100 on a teleconference. Burning Man organizers arranged the summit following participant complaints from BM2012 that included UAVs flying over crowds at the Man burn, one UAV flying at the Temple burn, and a concern that UAVs with cameras were invading peoples’ privacy.
49587811
submission
garymortimer writes:
AeroVironment, Inc. today announced that a recent outdoor test flight of a solar-powered prototype version of the company’s proven Puma AE small unmanned aircraft system (UAS), operating with the company’s newest long-endurance battery, lasted 9 hours, 11 minutes – significantly longer than the flight endurance of small UAS being used in the field today.
49140765
submission
garymortimer writes:
Working with Deezmaker 3d print shop and manufacturer of the new Bukito miniature printer Multirotor designers Velocity Pigeon lifted the printer with their their new VPAS 8 Octocopter. The VPAS 8 has been tested with up to 3.1kg of cargo and plans for you to 3D print your own VPAS 8 will be released soon. Its a bit of a work in progress at the moment.
49101511
submission
garymortimer writes:
The exhibitor displaying their UAV systems is the company Hubei Ewatt Technology Co., LTD., located in Wuhan China. Ewatt is one of the largest suppliers of imported equipment to the Chinese State Power Electrical Grid. Ewatt entered the UAV business to fill a need that the State Power Grid has for a more safe means of power-line inspections, which lead them to develop their first UAV systems.
Ewatt founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Zhao Guocheng will attend the show with 4 other company executives that will help man the display. One of these Ewatt company officers is Technical Director of VTOL Vehicles Mr. Dennis Fetters, an American living and working in China for 4 years now.
48986065
submission
garymortimer writes:
Stan Snow of Mountain Lake Labs files patent #61,858,116: Tri-Articulating & Morphing Bat Wing VTOL Ornithopter.
The MLABs Bat Wing is capable of 145 degrees deep sweep fore and aft in the horizontal plane. Where most ornithopters articulate wings with one to two degrees of freedom, the MLABs Bat Wing articulates thrice with also a fourth torsional rotation of the wings and individual morphing along the wingspan’s battens — creating the world’s most morphable UAV wing to date.
Each wing individually articulates for roll and yaw control. The wing system also deeply double articulates in the vertical Bat Wing Fig 1plane for efficient ornithopter flapping — bending on the upstroke and extending to scoop more air on the downstroke. Each wing is also variable in articulation on the up and downstroke.
48909001
submission
garymortimer writes:
The Hydra program will develop and demonstrate an unmanned undersea system with a new kind of unmanned-vehicle delivery system that inserts UAVs and UUVs. stealthily into operational environments to respond quickly to situations around the world without putting U.S. military personnel at risk.
The Hydra large UUV is to use modular payloads inside a standardized enclosure to deploy a mix of UAVs and UUVs, depending on the military situation. Hydra will integrate existing and emerging technologies in new ways to create an alternate means of delivering a variety of payloads close to where they're needed, DARPA officials say.
48722555
submission
garymortimer writes:
German tabloid newspaper The Bild has unearthed new video from a herons eye view of a 2010 taxi accident in Afghanistan. According to Bild a junior officer put the Heron into auto start and then was unable to stop it. The incident occurred at Mazar-i-Sharif on Mar. 17, 2010
Watch the ground crew get out of the way quick!
48352595
submission
garymortimer writes:
Instantly in at number one as my favourite drone footage, this filming does not show bits of leg or propeller is not GoPro bent out of shape and pans up beautifully and holds the desired shot. For once I am glad they left the sound recording running to catch the noise of the blast off. Top banana. Make sure you watch it in hi res.
SpaceX’s Grasshopper flew 325 m (1066 feet)–higher than Manhattan’s Chrysler Building–before smoothly landing back on the pad. For the first time in this test, Grasshopper made use of its full navigation sensor suite with the F9-R closed loop control flight algorithms to accomplish a precision landing. Most rockets are equipped with sensors to determine position, but these sensors are generally not accurate enough to accomplish the type of precision landing necessary with Grasshopper.
47898043
submission
garymortimer writes:
Two aeronautics students planned to use remote-controlled model planes packed with explosives to carry out terrorist attacks in Germany, according to prosecutors.
German authorities are holding two men of Tunisian origin who they say are facing possible charges for the “preparation of a serious, state-threatening act of violence”.
Prosecutors say the men are suspected of “procuring information and objects to commit Islamic extremist explosive attacks with remote-controlled model airplanes,” prosecutors added.
Police investigating the terror plot on Tuesday launched a series of raids in Stuttgart and Munich in southern Germany and Saxony in the east. They also carried out one raid in Belgium. No-one was arrested.
The suspects had been under surveillance for more than a year and authorities had recently detected “an increased interest in explosives and model aircraft”, according to an unnamed security source quoted by a German news agency.
47633975
submission
garymortimer writes:
“I had no intention of using it for eye-witnessing of what’s happening in Turkey,” Jenk wrote in an email to sUASNews. “However, I wanted to take a short film of Taksim Gezi Park for myself, having in mind that soon the park would become a concrete mass and would no longer be there.”
What he saw on the ground shocked him. Jenk reported seeing men, women, and children being beaten by police. But no video evidence of police brutality aired on government-controlled television.
“It’s really difficult to explain the things I have seen,” Jenk wrote. “I have been witnessing very bad things happening to innocent people; police violence, arresting lawyers and doctors, and hurting children.”
47384593
submission
garymortimer writes:
According to the unmanned helicopter’s pilot, police shot the aircraft from the sky, which was destroyed completely on impact with the ground. The pilot was unable to recover video of the incident, but was able to obtain video leading up to that point.
47321955
submission
garymortimer writes:
An octocopter designed by Aleksey Zaitsevsky of Ecilop that flies only using power derived from solar panels. No large payload and only flight in ground effect but like many of these things its a first. Only time will tell what applications might spawn from this. If you want to have a go at building your own Aleksey has kindly created a BOM with calculations
47099949
submission
garymortimer writes:
"At Dominos we’re always looking to innovate and find new ways to deliver our pizza and a DomiCopter could fit the bill perfectly," said Simon Wallis, sales and marketing director at Domino's. "We are the number one pizza delivery company and we are committed to staying in that position.
"What better way to totally avoid the traffic than to fly — if anything this will now make us even quicker! We think it's a great way to reinforce that Domino's go to more lengths than anyone to deliver great pizza."
