Apr 21
Drones are getting pretty advanced, and they’re continuing to prove their usefulness. They can do anything from dodge bullets to land on aircraft carriers
Apr 21
Fireworks look awesome from the ground, but have you ever wished you could be inside them? Probably not because that’s verifiably insane, but this quadcopter footage shows off how great the view is from up there.
Apr 20
Law enforcement agencies, such as the DEA in the US, have used thermal imaging cameras for a long time to locate marijuana growhouses. That’s because the hydroponic lights used for indoor growing operations give off a significant amount of heat, making them vulnerable to detection through the aforementioned cameras. When they come across a growhouse, they bust it. A crook in the UK is doing the opposite. By attaching a heat seeking camera to a drone, he seeks out growhouses and steals their weed, or compel them to pay “tax,” a fancy word for extortion.
Halesowen News interviewed the tech-savvy weed criminal who initially brought the drone so that he could look into people’s windows. When he noticed that police helicopters used thermal imaging cameras to find indoor marijuana growing operations, he bought a heat seeking camera online and hooked it up to the drone. When he locates a property he and “his crew” burgle the place.
Contrary to what most people would think, apparently in places like Halesowen, Cradley Heath and Oldbury “the people growing it are not gangsters,” says the crook. Apparently they don’t even need to use violence half the time when they hit up a growhouse.
Obviously in the crook’s eyes this isn’t a blatant violation of peoples’ privacy, let alone a complete disregard for the law. “I am just after drugs to steal and sell, if you break the law then you enter me and my drone’s world,” he says.
Crook Uses Heat Vision Drone To Target Weed Growhouses
, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Gadgets, drones,
Apr 18
The police have long used thermal imaging cameras to detect marijuana growing operations. Now, thanks to drones, crooks are getting into the weed-finding game too. Except in their case, they’re trying to find the weed so they can steal it.
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 17
Even in an age of security leaks and government surveillance, amazingly, Americans still feel pretty good about the role that technology will play in their lives, according to a new study. However, when you ask them about the specific advances—like bioengineering, wearable tech, drones, and robots—Americans are a bit more wary of welcoming the future.
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 15
You’ve never seen New York City like this. Well, you have if you’ve seen the Spiderman movies, but this footage captured by photographer Randy Scott Slavin is no CGI fantasy. It’s Gotham at its grandest.
Apr 14
We often hear rumors about offers and counteroffers whenever a major company makes a big acquisition. For example, when Snapchat was reportedly being courted, it received multiple bids from Facebook and Google. The same was rumored for WhatsApp, which Facebook ultimately bought for $19 billion, and Google claimed it hadn’t even placed a bid. Recently several reports claimed Facebook was interested in drone maker Titan Aerospace, offering as much as $60 million. Google today announced that it has acquired Titan Aerospace.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google hasn’t disclosed the financial terms behind this acquisition. However, the company did confirm that following the acquisition, about 20 or so employees of Titan will continue to work in their New Mexico office. Titan’s CEO Vern Raburn will continue running the day to day operations.
Titan Aerospace develops high-altitude solar powered drones. It claims that these drones can provide speeds of up to 1GB per second and hopes to begin commercial operations by next year. Speeds of 1GB per second are faster than most broadband connections in the U.S. as well as other developed countries.
In a statement, a Google spokesman said that atmospheric satellites could help bring internet access to millions of people around the world, particularly those in remote locations. “It’s still early days,” the spokesman said. Even DARPA has been thinking around the same lines. It is working on a project that utilizes unused drones from Iraq and kits them with a pod that can provide internet where needed.
Google Picks Up Titan Aerospace Before Facebook Can , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in General, drones, Facebook, Google,
Apr 14
The Wall Street Journal has just confirmed that Google will be purchasing Titan Aerospace, the same high-altitude drone startup that Facebook had been in talks with earlier this year
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