Apr 22
A civilian drone aircraft with high-resolution video capability was reportedly used by the police to conduct surveillance on the entire city of Compton, California at the same time. Compton is … Continue reading
Apr 17
Well, hmph. That’s not how drones work guys. Supposedly, this video shows Portugal attempting to launch a naval drone by giving it a running start. As the drone is thrown in the air to fly, it immediately nosedives and crashes into the ocean. What a wonderful failure.
Apr 16
Dronies! Drone-Selfies Are a Thing!
Posted in: Today's ChiliI have to admit when I first heard of drone selfies, I thought that actual drones were taking selfies of themselves.
That seemed a bit odd, but it made a lot more sense when I saw Amit Gupta’s drone selfie video. It simply blew my mind. The zoom out is quite amazing.
There are now a few more dronies popping up – so it’s almost sort of a thing now. The trick of a good dronie is to find a good location, because otherwise it just looks ordinary.
I like the overall look captured by the dronies as well. You can see so much detail when the drone zips away.
[via kottke]
Apr 16
The Pentagon has plans to breath new life into old drones, and they will do so by transforming these once loyal servants into Wi-Fi hotspots. Of course, using drones as a Wi-Fi hotspot is not exactly the newest idea on the block, and neither does it elicit an “Eureka!” moment, but it is interesting to see how this might change the face of battle in a war. Normally, the equipment that is required for long-range high-bandwidth Wi-Fi is more often than not unavailable to troops in the field. With some modifications made, engineers do hope that this will change, offering airborne Wi-Fi hotspots which allows isolated troops to have a decent data connection.
This does seem to be pretty much in vein with that of Facebook’s initiative to deliver their Connectivity Lab idea to the world, blanketing even remote areas with Wi-Fi connectivity, although critics of this program have (justifiable) fears that such drones could be the weak point when it comes to security.
On the flipside, if this program takes off successfully (pun not intended), then troops on the battlefield will be able to gain access to a secure, stable and fast internet connection. Dick Ridgway, Darpa programme manager shared, “We’re pleased with the technical achievements we’ve seen so far in steerable millimetre-wave antennas and millimetre-wave amplifier technology. These successes – and the novel networking approaches needed to maintain these high-capacity links – are key to providing forward deployed units with the same high-capacity connectivity we all enjoy over our 4G cell-phone networks.”
The initial phases of this particular drone transformation program would include smaller, steerable antennas; signal boosters; increased power efficiency and a light pod that will allow the device to be carried without burdening the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) itself. It is said that this network could very well hit the 1 gigabit per-second (Gb/s) capacity, making it as fast as Google Fiber’s. Tweets and Facebook updates directly from the battlefield, yo!
Source
[ Pentagon To Recycle Old Drones As Wi-Fi Hotspots copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Apr 14
Google is adding a drone specialist to its roster of recent acquisitions, with startup Titan Aerospace set to bring its Solara solar-powered unmanned planes to the search giant’s airstrip. Billed … Continue reading
Apr 14
Google has acquired drone maker Titan Aerospace, the autonomous solar-powered flying vehicle company believed to be next in Facebook’s sights, in a move it says will help Project Loon in … Continue reading
Apr 13
Parrot AR.Drone Controlled with Head Movement Using Oculus Rift: OculusDrone
Posted in: Today's ChiliLast year we saw a drone camera system that streamed live 3D video that can be viewed through the Oculus Rift headset. Diego Araos wrote a program that not only lets you use the Rift to view the feed from a Parrot AR.Drone 2′s camera, it also uses control the drone through the headset.
Diego’s program OculusDrone taps into the Rift’s head tracking feature to control the AR.Drone 2 remotely. However, you need to use a keyboard command to order the AR.Drone to takeoff (Enter) and land (Escape).
Zip to GitHub to download OculusDrone.
Apr 11
Drones have been in the limelight recently, where at least one of the stories do not actually bring any kind of comfort to us ordinary folk. After all, who would want a drone to actually crash into you while you are outdoors? Those things aren’t exactly the lightest devices around, and from a great height at a certain velocity, it might even maim or kill rather than give you a nasty shock. For all you know, it could be a staged assassination attempt that has been disguised as an “accident”. Enough daydreaming for now – back to the topic at hand, a drone which can fly around indefinitely without ever returning to base simply because it can recharge itself by landing on a power line.
Yup, researchers have worked on ‘bird’ drones which actually land on power lines so that they can recharge themselves, and a working prototype has already been developed as you read this. Such drones could come in handy by the military in a long-running surveillance campaign, where the drone would rely on the magnetic field in order to land in the perfect spot. Apart from that, the Air Force, too, is working on something similar which might even hunt in swarms. Now that’s a scary thought, don’t you think so? The birds aren’t gonna be too happy to share their power lines with robots though, but what other options have they?
Drones That Recharge Themselves On Power Lines , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Robots, drone, 
Apr 11
Rodger Cleye made this awesome flying X-wing Fighter. Maybe it can shoot down some of those other drones in our skies. This 19 lb., five-foot-long X-Wing Fighter comes after Rodger already made a flying James Bond mannequin with a jet pack and the Marty McFly working hover-board.
This X-Wing is a tri-rotor design with three 100A ESCs, 1200W 1050KV motors, and 12″ rotors. It just needs an action figure in the cockpit. The frame is made from PVC to keep it as light as possible. The tri-rotor design gives it much better yaw control than quadrotors, but that means that sometimes it ends up on its nose.
Still, it is super impressive to see in action. Maybe he can make some TIE Fighter drones and a Death Star balloon and have a cool dogfight.
[via Hack A Day]
Apr 10
Not to be outdone by Facebook’s vision of a drone internet
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