Drones News - Page 11

During the winter months when it gets cold, it gets much harder to get to the shops and buy your beer... so what step do you take next? You order your beer to be delivered by an unmanned aerial drone, that's what.

Lakemaid, a Minnesota-based brewing company, has done just that - after it saw 60 Minutes' bit on Amazon's same-day delivery system that uses drones. The owners of Lakemaid Brewing Company developed its own unmanned aerial delivery vehicle, which just delivered Lakemaid's popular winter lager to an ice fishing shack near Lake Millie Lacs.

A drone had a 12-pack of Lakemaid's popular Winter Lager strapped to it, where it took off to its delivery point. The video above, was met with divided response, with beer fans wanting to know when their local brewers would adopt the same technology, but was also met with criticism as drones are often used for surveillance by the military.

A new report has been published by TechCrunch that suggest that Facebook is in acquisition talks with solar-powered drone manufacturer, Titan Aerospace. Facebook is considering the acquisition as an affordable way to bring internet to countries with little useful infrastructure and would be part of its Internet.org initiative.

Titan Aerospace makes small aerial drones that are capable of up to five years of non-stop flight thanks to their extreme efficiency and solar power source. The report says that Facebook would used these drones to blanket the world with free Wi-Fi and would start with 11,000 of the Solara 60 models flying high over Africa to bring internet access to those with no hope of having access anytime soon. The deal is reportedly worth about $60 million, which is pocket change when you consider that Facebook just recently purchased WhatsApp for $16 billion.

One interesting aspect that I could see the drones being used in is inside countries where the government has restricted access to the internet, or where the countries infrastructure has been compromised due to rioting, fighting or war. With the smaller Solara 60 drones being cheaper, there is no reason that a company with deep pockets such as Facebook could not deploy 100,000 of them within just a few years, and give the entire world cheap or free internet access.

Odds are that many of the products that you buy spent some time on a ship crossing the ocean at one time. About 90% of the world's trade goods are shipped by boat. The shipping industry is gigantic and is worth about $375 billion annually.

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc has announced a new plan for ships that it thinks could revolutionize shipping and save shippers lots of money while reducing pollution. The plan is to make drone ships that are controlled from a virtual bridge on dry land and have no human crew.

The ships would use redundant systems like aircraft and an array of sensors to see what is in the water in front of them. The crew is one of the highest cost centers for a shipping company with crew costs consuming about 44% of the entire operating expenses for a ship.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hopes to make it easier for troops on the ground, fighting in remote locations where airstrikes aren't readily available, to use smartphones to control unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Specifically, DARPA wants help with the Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded Systems (ARES) design concept.

"Many missions require dedicated vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) assets, but most ground units don't have their own helicopters," said Ashish Bagai, DARPA program manager, in a press statement. "ARES would make organic and versatile VTOL capability available to many more individual units. Our goal is to provide flexible, terrain-independent transportation that avoids ground-based threats, in turn supporting expedited, cost-effective operations and improving the likelihood of mission success."

If a drone is flying high in the sky above you, they can be hard to spot, but when you do see it, it looks like a drone. This might not be the case in another 5-10 years, with the US Army finding a solution to this: making the drones, look like birds.

Enter Maveric, which features a bird-like profile, with flexible wings. The drone is made from composite metal, and can fly at heights of 25,000 feet, scooting along at 20-65 mph. Derek Lyons, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Prioria Robotics, said: "There was a Special Operations requirement for a plane that had a natural, biological look - it wasn't supposed to look DoD-ish."

Prioria Robotics won a $4.5 million contract from the US Army's Rapid Equipping Force to make 36 of the bird-like drones for an urgent, undisclosed need. Earlier this month, training to use the Maveric began at the Joint Special Operations Task Force, with full-equipped delivery expected this month. One of the major benefits of Maveric is that it weighs just 2.5 pounds, and is capable of being contained in a 6-inch tube.

It's often said that laws can't keep up with modern technology. Interestingly enough, this phrase has been used a lot lately in conjunction with drones, specifically in regards to whether or not they should be allowed to fly over US soil. The US government apparently isn't the only interested group in using drones.

A resident in Seattle, WA tells CHS:

This afternoon, a stranger set an aerial drone into flight over my yard and beside my house near Miller Playfield. I initially mistook its noisy buzzing for a weed-whacker on this warm spring day. After several minutes, I looked out my third-story window to see a drone hovering a few feet away. My husband went to talk to the man on the sidewalk outside our home who was operating the drone with a remote control, to ask him to not fly his drone near our home. The man insisted that it is legal for him to fly an aerial drone over our yard and adjacent to our windows. He noted that the drone has a camera, which transmits images he viewed through a set of glasses. He purported to be doing "research". We are extremely concerned, as he could very easily be a criminal who plans to break into our house or a peeping-tom.

The FAA has said that they are investigating a pilot's claim that he saw a drone flying over Brooklyn in New York. The pilot claims to have seen the drone while on final approach to John F Kennedy Airport. Over the radio, he can be heard saying, "We saw a drone, a drone aircraft."

"The FAA is investigating a report...he saw a small, unmanned or remote-controlled aircraft while on final approach to Runway 31 Right. The sighting was approximately four to five miles west of the airport at an altitude of approximately 1,500 feet," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement.

Other aircraft in the area was warned of the drone sighting, but two other pilots said that they did not see the drone. The FAA is working on new rules to allow unmanned aircraft to be flown in US airspace. Generally only governments and public entities, such as police departments, are allowed to operate them. Even they must apply for permission first.

It looks like the US skies are about to get a little scarier, with next-generation military drones being unveiled by a top US manufacturer. These new unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will sport an ultra-light laser, which is capable of reportedly destroying an object at the speed of light - yikes.

Someone close to the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) told Time magazine "it would give us an unlimited magazine".

The Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA), over the last four years, have handed contractor General Atomics over $60 million to develop, and then scale the HELLADS project, which contains a very powerful 150kW laser. Lasers available at that strength contain the power to destroy an incoming rocket or plane, but are very big and heavy - meaning they're only capable of being deployed on stationary defense systems.

We know that the US government, and many others, use drones for 'security' purposes, but mostly for spying and intel gathering activities. But, even at the size they are now, they can't really be seen all that well to the unsuspecting eye.

What if they could get small enough to fly right next to you without you even noticing? Surely, I jest. But, it's no lie, or trick. Vanessa Alarcon was a college student when she attended a 2007 anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. and heard someone shout "Oh my God, look at those". Alarcon told The Washington Post:

I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.

Police in Canberra suggest that their new point-to-point speed cameras be lined to unmanned aerial surveillance drones and used to track vehicles of interest to authorities. The first of the cameras will sport automated number plate recognition technology to calculate a car's average speed and whether it is within the legal limit, are due to hit the skies by the end of the year. Of course, with unmanned drones flying through the skies, they can be used for other tasks not linked to tracking cars.

Minutes from a Government point-to-point steering committee meeting held in June 2010 show that police recommended a broader range of uses for the cameras. According to the minutes which were obtained by the Opposition under the Freedom of Information Act, a senior police officer said the cameras could be used for other purposes. The minutes stated:

He noted that the use of P2P ANPR cameras to detect unregistered, stolen and other vehicles of interest would provide ongoing and longer term benefits for the project. a specific benefit would derive if the P2P cameras were linked to UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] which could track vehicles of interest.