Drones - Page 4

Urban attack drones equipped with rocket launchers and night vision are currently being tested in none other than China.

According to Mashable, a Chinese company that is a subsidiary of a state-owned aerospace company is currently in the middle of developing a tiny attack drone designed for urban locations. This drone has been titled "Tianyi" and is a quad-copter that is primarily designed for unnamed reconnaissance missions.

The drone also has the capability of doing close-range strikes against people and armored vehicles. Equipped with infrared lasers for nighttime operations, and armed with 50mm rockets that can be fired from 1km away, manufacturers are hoping they can mass produce "Tianyi" and sell it to Western countries.

Researchers from both Caltech and NASA have developed a new type of drone that can be fired from a moving cannon.

The drone is called the Streamlined Quick Unfolding Investigation Drone, or SQUID for short. SQUID has been developed by Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has the ability to fold down into almost a football-like shape. Most impressively is the once SQUID is in its smallest form factor, it can be placed inside of a tube and then launched into the sky.

The multirotor design initiates once the drone is in mid-air, granting its stability and flight. The drone doesn't have to be stationary for it to be shot out of the cannon. The above video demonstrates that SQUID can be shot out of a moving vehicle traveling at 50mph and still transition into stable flight. SQUID is designed for emergency response teams and space exploration missions. An image of SQUID's design has been provided in the entirety of this article.

Alphabet, Google's parent company has a subsidiary company called 'Wing', Wing has now become the first company in the United States to deliver a package by drone. Achievement unlocked!

A small town in Virginia is home called Christiansburg is home to Wing's testing grounds as residents can order products as per normal but instead of getting them driven by FedEx, they can get a drone drop off. Families can use the Wing app to order products, and one family who has already used the app bought Tylenol, cough drops, Vitamin C tablets, water and tissues.

The Wing drones are capable of transporting a maximum of three pounds of goods to a consumer that is located within six miles of the drone loading center called the "Nest". You are probably wondering how the dropping off transition happens, so once the drone has arrived at the marked address it hovers above the house and instead of landing it lowers the cargo via a cable to purchaser.

If you didn't know, Amazon are planning on implementing a drone delivery service that would allow for Amazon buyers to receive their goods in 30 minutes or less.

While that might seem like a far-fetched idea, the reality of it arriving in the US has just taken a few more steps closer to being real. According to an announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration, a massively significant milestone in drone flight has just been reached. Reuters reports that the The University of Alaska has just completed the first FAA-approved "beyond line of sight" drone flight this week.

Why is this milestone so significant? Until now, drones were under a law of "line of sight" which requires drone operators be in vision of their drone at all times. Irish Automation is a company who makes collision avoidance software for drones, this software was used by the University of Alaska in their test and was approved by the FAA. Alexander Harmsen, CEO of Iris Automation spoke out about this achievement, saying "This is the first time detect and avoid technology is approved by an aviation authority as reliable enough to allow for BVLOS [beyond visual line of sight] drone operations".

Since drones have become a layman's new toy there has been many creations and attachments made for them, but this truly does take 1st place for awesome - introducing the Wasp Flamethrower Drone.

Above we have a video released onto the Throwflame YouTube Channel and it showcases the brand new flamethrower attachment called the Throwflame TF-19 Wasp. This attachment is designed to fit a commericial-grad heavy lift drone and is equipped with a one-gallon fuel tanker that is capable of launching flame up to 25 feet.

The tanker supplies 100 seconds of flame throwing awesomeness and comes in at the cost of $1499. That isn't the full cost though, since the TF-19 is an attachment you will need a drone to fly it. According to Throwflame, who talked to the The Verge, the drone in the video is a DJI S1000 with an A2 flight controller, 6S 16,000mAh LiPo battery and a TBS Tango R/C remote. All of that prices out to about an additional $2,600.

Boeing has revealed a giant drone that is capable of changing the way that transportation of cargo is done from small destination of point A to B. The giant drone is capable of lifting 500 pounds of weight and will serve a staple example of what future autonomous flying aircrafts can achieve.

Amazingly the massive drone came from a concept drawing on a piece of paper and only took Boeing engineers three months to bring to life, titling the creation"unmanned electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) cargo air vehicle (CAV) prototype." The company has said that the drone has passed all testing done at Boeing research labs in Missouri, and that the drone represents "another major step in our Boeing eVTOL strategy."

Greg Hyslop, Boeing chief technology officer said that the company has an "opportunity to really change air travel and transport, and we'll look back on this day as a major step in that journey."

The times of taking a selfie with an outstretched arm is over as AEE has created a drone that attaches to the back of your phone case, and once activated, will hover at the perfect height for the ultimate selfie.

Selfly is your very own selfie and recording drone assistant, merely unfolding the from the back of the users phone case will allow for on-the-fly selfies and live streams. The drone has the ability to take pictures in 1080p and record record in 60FPS but sadly only has a four-minute battery life. Selfly can take panoramic shots and allows for the user to set the drone at the perfect height using the virtual joysticks or the point-and-fly option within the app.

Of course having a drone attached to the back of your phone case is going to increase the width of your phone, but luckily enough it isn't as bad as you would think. Selfly only increases the width of the average phone by about half an inch, which is a small price to pay if selfies or 1080p recording wherever you go is something you desire to do for a short amount of time.

CES 2018 - At last years Superbowl halftime show Intel displayed a drone-based light show, at this years CES Intel gave the same treatment at their keynote and also introduced a new version of a drone called the 'Shooting Star Mini.'

These very small drones are completely safe to fly in-doors and also have the ability to be able to self-detect where they are in the space of the room, while in conjunction to the other drones partnered with them. At the keynote these drones danced to the song 'Stargazing' by Kygo, the performance was a preprogrammed routine implemented in the numerous drones that were combined together to create the light show.

Unfortunately these drones will not be available on the consumer level as Intel only intends them to be used for specific light show events such as the one at CES. Instead of being individually controlled, Intel say that one person can control up to 100 of them at once, which in turn when following the pre-programmed choreography will produce a immaculate light show.

Now that Wi-Fi is almost a necessity, nothing is more annoying than walking into a room in your home that is just out of reach of the signal to router, with iRobot soon updating the Roomba app with the ability of letting owners of use their Roomba to see which rooms are Wi-Fi dead zones, and which are not.

Your Roomba will be able to map out the problematic Wi-Fi areas within your home, and combined with mapping out floor areas and specific route planning, Roomba devices will have more efficiently navigate from room to room within homes.

Roomba device will be able to map out the strengths of certain areas within users homes, and once Roomba owners update their devices, people struggling with Wi-Fi signals in certain areas of their homes will be able to adjust their Wi-Fi settings accordingly, mostly eliminating Wi-Fi dead zones in their houses.

DJI have announced the arrival the world's first super-compact 35 digital film camera, the Zenmuse X7. Aimed for professional cinematographers and video production enthusiasts, the Zenmuse X7 features an integrated gimbal and can capture 6K CinemaDNG RAW and 5.2K Apple ProRest at 30FPS or 3.9K Cinerma DNG RAW and 2.7k Apple ProRes at 60 FPS.

Taking advantage of new FSI-Cu technology, the X7's sensor features thinner interconnections, this increases photo-sensitivity and enables a more compact lens mound to be used. Utilizing DJI's new Cinema Color System, this innovative system preserves accurate colors for easier post-processing while maintaining color accuracy.

Four lenses are currently available with focal lengths at 16mm, 24mm, 35mm and 50mm, all capable of resolution up to 8K. They're not cheap however, prices start at at $1,199 to $1,299 for the 50mm. When attached to the DJI Inspire 2, flight times are marginally impacted. This is a result of the Zenmuse X7's weighing only 631 grams, with expected flight times of up to 23 minutes.