Hasta La Gadget!

Google Ventures and others have invested $10.7m in a drone OS startup, Airware, aiming to create autonomous, unmanned aircraft which could be used by emergency services or in civil applications such as farming and mapping. The funding round, which sees Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz dip into their pockets, will support development of Airware’s off-the-shelf autopilots for drones, which are intended to be far more cost-effective than traditional such systems.

Airware does not offer full drones, or indeed the majority of the hardware users would require to piece together an autonomous airborne craft. Instead, it has a range of three different autopilot systems – osFlexPilot, osFlexQuad, and osNanoPilot – intended for different types of flying machine: fixed-wing, helicopters, or multi-rotor ‘coptors.

In addition to the flight control software, for actually piloting the craft, the three “brains” can also control different payloads. That might be a camera array for remotely monitoring infrastructure such as power cables, or for taking aerial photography for use in mapping applications; Airware has one existing client, for instance, using the autopilots to guide drones in monitoring rhino poaching across a wildlife conservancy in Kenya.

“Robotics has long been a field that overpromised and underdelivered,” Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon said of the investment. “We think drones are the most likely way to rectify that.”

Pricing for the autopilots range from $3,900 to $8,500, depending on configuration and flexibility. They come preloaded with software for a broad range of craft, navigating through preset waypoints and from remotely-loaded routes, and with the skills to take off or land autonomously; in addition, they can control pan/tilt camera mounts. However, Airware also offers an open API to customize the setup to suit unique project requirements.

Drones have controversial in recent years, as the number of autonomous and remotely-controlled aircraft increase. Back in April, Google’s own executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, called for greater regulation of civilian drones, warning that the potential use for terrorism or anti-civil-rights purposes could swiftly get out of hand.

Google Ventures joins multi-million Airware drone brain investment is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Does it fly? Check? Does it have beer as a payload? Check. Does this robot deploy that beer via parachute to a thirsty human below? Check. I think I have just found man’s best robot friend.

You just order a beer via your iPhone app then the robot drops a parachuted beer to your location.

Sadly, folks on my continent won’t see it dropping beer overhead any time soon. This SteadiDrone octocopter has been specially modified to deliver beers to attendees at the upcoming Oppikoppi music festival in South Africa.

Hopefully they have worked out all the kinks. I’d hate to see a parachute fail to deploy and hit some poor guy on the head. Someone will probably hack this thing and fly some free beer to their place. That would be awesome.

[via Gizmag and DVICE via Geekologie]

The world of robotics has made yet another contribution, where this time around, the X-47B, which is the most valued drone by the Navy, has managed to perform a successful simulated landing on an aircraft carrier deck – and this marks the first time that such a thing happened. It might look deceptively simple to perform, but in reality, it is not such a case. This particular advancement marks the sign that the Navy could very well be able to operate drones off its aircraft carriers, where it also increases the ante for the US in the world of military robotics.

The video above depicts the X-47B drone descending from the heavens onto a mock carrier deck on dry land, and this incident was recorded at the Navy’s Patuxent River testbed. This test flight is different from the rest, where the robot’s tailhook manage to catch the MK-7 arresting gear (which is some kind of cable), which is a move that the Navy’s actual Top Gun pilots would need to catch all the time whenever they touch down on aircraft carriers while at sea.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Campaign For Killer Robot International Ban, iPads To Assist Wounded Veterans In Home Care Situation,

When NASA aims to hit a volcano to study its fabulous plumes of heated debris, they do it in style: with a set of Dragon Eye unmanned aerial vehicles. The mission NASA rolled with three Aerovironment RQ-14 Dragon Eye UAVs from the United States Marine Corps (USMC), these vehicles issued via the General Services Administration’s San Francisco office. It was NASA’s Ames Research Center, at Moffett Field, California that negotiated the transfer, and the Turrialba Volcano, near San Jose, Costa Rica, that they’ve flown over.

Each of these lovely little flyers is a 5.9-pound aircraft with twin electric engines and a 3.75-foot wingspan. They’re each able to carry a one-pound payload that NASA chooses to fill with instrumentation that’ll allow them to study the volcano. Each of these planes is able to carry this payload for up to one hour inside a volcanic plume – important to keep in mind as this mission acts as another example of how military might can be used for civilian science purposes – a definite positive!

The full study had 10 total flights between March 11th and March 14th (of this year, 2013), each of them reaching above approximately 10,500 feet above sea level along the rim of the Torrialba summit crater. Flights reached up to 12,500 feet ASL, more than 2,000 feet above the Turrialba summit – hot stuff!

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California’s own David Pieri, this project’s principal investigator and a research scientist, noted the dangers of missions such as these.

““It is very difficult to gather data from within volcanic eruption columns and plumes because updraft wind speeds are very high and high ash concentrations can quickly destroy aircraft engines. Such flight environments can be very dangerous to manned aircraft. Volcanic eruption plumes may stretch for miles from a summit vent, and detached ash clouds can drift hundreds to thousands of miles from an eruption site.” – Pieri

It’s important to note that each of these flying craft are retired military tools, and that they’re being used here to improve NASA satellite data as well as aviation safety in the end. Instrumentation aboard the craft included the following:

• USMC visible and infrared video cameras
• Sulfur dioxide and particle sensors
• Automatic atmospheric sampling bottles keyed to measure sulfur dioxide concentration

This same research center (Ames) will be working on this project with larger SIERRA unmanned aircraft as well, each of them working with what they characterize as a more sophisticated mass spectrometer so they’ll be able to measure a whole new set of gasses pluming forth from Turrialba. These larger craft weigh in at around 400 pounds (takeoff weight) and have the ability to carry a 100-pound payload.

[via NASA]

NASA taps US Marines for Dragon Eye volcano flight is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Looking for a lifeguard that won’t get all out of shape like David Hasselhoff? A research lab in Iran is working on one – a robotic lifeguard that can respond instantly to passengers and crew who fall from ships by flying to their rescue and dropping a life preserver to them.

The flying robot is called Pars and it is ship-based. The quadcopter can be alerted when someone falls overboard, or is pushed overboard. Once it’s launched, Pars scans the area around the boat with a thermal sensor and drops a life preserver to keep them afloat until crew members can get to them. Hopefully the Baywatch theme is playing while all of this is going on.

Right now, the prototype Pars drone can only hold one life preserver ring, but the goal is for the ‘bot to hold up to three, allowing it to respond to multiple people. It’s a great concept and if they can pull it off, this one could save many lives.

Think about how many cruise ships lately have had problems and you start to see how this could be a real winner.

[via Robots.Net via Geekosystem]