The Grasp Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania developed a quadcopter with a robotic arm, that is able to “grasp”, like an eagle does.
The grasping action was successfully tested to a speed up to 3 m/s (7,2 Km/h).
In 2009 Burrard Lucas, an British wildlife photographer started the Beetle Cam project, aimed at getting close up photos and videos of african wildlife. How? A look at the equipment will get you the picture:
Continue reading BeetleCam project goes aerial with the BeetleCopter multirotor
Using drones for surveillance is a somewhat controversial activity that entails several aspects, including legal ones, that have to be weighted and balanced for the best interest of all the parties involved.
In urban environments the use of drones could be an important tool for law enforcement, although such use requires some careful planning. This kind of use has to take into account, and balance with citizen’s right to privacy.
In other instances, multirotors were used by activists to monitor what they deem as illegal or disgraceful activities, for example on the treatment of animals on private land. Check out this story or this one, for example. Interestingly, both these stories deal with the protection of animals from mistreatment.
On the same line, but in an entirely different environment, a project have started, as a collaboration between Airware, a company that specializes in the construction of UAVs for a variety of applications, and Ol Pejeta Conservacy, a non-profit wildlife conservancy in Kenya supporting endangered species, tourism and community outreach.
An amazing little personal drone in the form of a micro helicopter has been in use for a while now, strictly for military applications.
In Thomas More College in Belgium an “experiment” was made to employ a little personal drone, a DJI Phantom equipped with a GoPro Camera for the surveillance of students during exams, as shown in the following video:
The technology at the moment suffers from a number of limitations: Continue reading Drone for class surveillance in school during exams, an efficient technology?
As documented in the video below, a multirotor piloted by pro-animal activists that was filming the activities of some pigeon hunters in Pennsylvania, was shot while in action.
The author of the movie states that shooting the multirotor was an illegal act and constitutes “criminal damage to property”. The police called to the shooting spot by the activists decided to not take any particular action. Continue reading Pennsylvania Pigeon hunters shoot at multirotor that was filming them
ArchAerial, a young company that specializes in the use of multirotors for mapping purposes, with a focus on archeological research and excavation sites, has published an interesting video on the possible uses of quadcopters in a restaurant environment , in collaboration with Swift’s Attic, a nice restaurant apparently open to innovation and new technologies, located in Austin Texas.
In the video, the little custom made multicopters from ArchAerial are shown performing a variety of tasks such as serving at the table:
slicing vegetables:
Continue reading Kitchen Drones in action – Multirotors support in running a restaurant
Flying First Person View or FPV has a lot of addicts in the RC models community. The basic idea is that a video camera is mounted on the nose of the model and hooked to a wireless video transmitter. The pilot can then watch the video stream, either on a screen mounted on a tripod, or with special video goggles such as the ones in the picture below.
On December 29, 2013, the flight of an UAV drone was detected over the International Airport of Beijing at 11:00 AM. The drone, an RC model airplane equipped with video camera, was flying at 100 Km/h.
An helicopter was sent to intercept the UAV, which tuned out to be a drone owned by a local company that was performing mapping operations of the airport. Although the operation was legal, the flight of the UAV was done without the proper authorizations and without warning the airport operators. Hence the alarm when the drone was spotted flying over the airport.
The departure of 10 civilian flights was delayed because of this accident.
The 4 man operating the drone are detained by the local police and have been charged with “endangering public security” and “seriously interrupting flight order”.
Source: Suasnews
As we recently discussed, FAA is taking steps to regulate and allow private drones in the US aerial space. Federal Aviation Administration FAA have now selected 6 sites, out of 25 applicants, for the testing and development of drones and the establishment of a regulatory framework that will allow drones to fly for commercial purposes in the US sky, with a focus on safety.
And the winners are…. Continue reading FAA named 6 sites to host the development and testing of drones as commercial airlines