Tag: Drones

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Researchers test new systems to track drones

Drone experiment
The University of Washington’s Cory Cantey and Karine Chen prepare a drone nicknamed Papaya for flight at the Columbia Gorge Regional Airport. (UW Autonomous Flight Systems Laboratory Photo)

As more and more drones fill the skies, increasingly sophisticated methods will be required to track them under increasingly challenging conditions. How will they navigate if they lose touch with the Global Positioning System? How will authorities know who to call if a drone goes wrong?

Two experiments illustrate how those questions are being addressed. One is being conducted by University of Washington researchers at the Columbia Gorge Regional Airport. The other is being done in cooperation with the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma.

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Amazon drone delivered to the Smithsonian

Amazon drone
An Amazon Prime Air drone is prepared for display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. (Smithsonian Photo)

Amazon’s drone delivery service is still in its experimental phase, but it’s already destined to become a part of American history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

An Amazon Prime Air hybrid drone is being prepared for display in the museum’s Thomas W. Haas We All Fly gallery when it opens in Washington, D.C., in 2021. The “We All Fly” exhibition will highlight general aviation themes such as sport flying, private airplanes and flying for business, humanitarian and utility purposes.

The drone will go on display alongside such aircraft as the Cessna 180, Gates Lear jet, Cirrus SR22 and the Oracle Challenger III aerobatic biplane.

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Boeing focuses on drones and its ‘NeXt’ steps

Drone traffic management
Artwork lays out a concept for a traffic management system that would allow drones to share the skies with each other as well as larger aircraft. (NASA Illustration)

Boeing says it’s aiming to create a traffic management system for drones that makes use of artificial intelligence, blockchain technology — and one of the companies in its investment portfolio.

SparkCognition will be Boeing’s partner in the traffic management project. Last year, the Texas-based AI company benefited from a $32.5 million investment round that included funding from Boeing HorizonX Ventures.

Boeing is also creating a new business group, known as Boeing NeXt, to leverage the company’s research and development activities and investments in areas such as autonomous flight, smart cities, advanced propulsion and other parts of the wider transportation ecosystem.

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Loon and Wing graduate from X moonshot factory

Wing drone
An experimental Wing drone takes flight in California. (Alphabet / Wing Photo)

Two of Google’s best-known flights of fancy, Project Loon and Project Wing, are being hatched from their X incubator to become independent businesses under the wing of Alphabet, Google’s holding company.

Loon will work with mobile network operators globally to bring internet access to a market of billions of people currently without high-speed connections.

Meanwhile, Wing is developing a drone delivery system as well as an air traffic management platform to route robotic drones safely through the skies.

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Facebook cancels its internet drone program

Facebook says it’s ending its campaign to build a fleet of high-altitude drones to boost internet connectivity, after spending millions of dollars on the years-long effort. In a Facebook blog post, engineering director Yael Maguire noted that other companies were building high-altitude platform stations, or HAPS. “Going forward, we’ll continue to work with partners like Airbus on HAPS connectivity generally, and on the other technologies needed to make this system work, like flight control computers and high-density batteries,” Maguire said.

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Boeing leads $16M investment in Matternet

Matternet drone
A Matternet drone flies over Zurich. (Matternet Photo)

Boeing HorizonX Ventures has taken the lead role in a $16 million Series A funding round for Matternet, a California company specializing in drone delivery operations in urban environments.

Other investors include Swiss Post, Sony Innovation Fund and Levitate Capital, the companies said today. Matternet aims to use the funds to expand operations in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

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Boeing invests in Kittyhawk drone software venture

Kittyhawk dashboard
Kittyhawk’s Web-based dashboard gives drone users an overview on operations. (Kittyhawk Graphic)

Boeing says its HorizonX venture capital arm is investing in Kittyhawk, a San Francisco startup that provides end-to-end software solutions for autonomous drone operations.

The investment is part of a $5 million seed round that was led by Bonfire Ventures with participation by Boeing HorizonX Ventures as well as Freestyle Capital and Kluz Ventures’ The Flying Object. Boeing didn’t disclose precisely how much it contributed to the round.

Boeing says Kittyhawk’s software will support the development of a traffic management system that allows piloted and autonomous vehicles to coexist safely.

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Amazon patents messaging system for drones

Drone signal system
A diagram shows a drone projecting squares of light labeled “Yes” or “No.” Depending on which box the package recipient stands in, the drone could determine whether or not to leave a package in the drop zone designated as DZ. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

For an earlier generation, one of the sweetest sounds of summer was the music coming from an ice-cream truck. For the next generation, will it be the tune of a delivery drone?

That’s just one of the possibilities covered in a patent issued to Amazon today: It addresses methods by which a drone could signal its approach, as well as techniques for signaling back.

The application was filed by a group of Seattle-area inventors on Amazon’s behalf almost two years ago.

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NASA adds a drone to its 2020 Mars rover

Mars Helicopter
An artist’s conception shows the Mars Helicopter. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration)

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has given the thumbs-up to putting a helicopter on Mars.

The Mars Helicopter, which is actually more of an autonomous drone, will be packed into the belly pan of a Red Planet rover that’s due for launch in 2020.

For months, mission planners and scientists have been debating whether it’d be worth flying the 4-pound rotorcraft for a 30-day test campaign.

Adding the drone to the rover potentially takes away from the space and time that can be devoted to other scientific experiments. But in today’s announcement, Bridenstine said the helicopter would build on NASA’s “proud history of firsts.”

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10 teams cleared to push the limits with drones

Aerix drone
Pilot projects will send drones where no drones have gone before. (Aerix Photo)

The U.S. Department of Transportation has selected 10 state, local and tribal governments to oversee pilot projects that will go where no drones have gone before. But this time around, Amazon has been grounded.

The projects are meant to help set a course for ever-expanding drone operations over the next three years.

“Data gathered from these pilot projects will form the basis of a new regulatory framework to safely integrate drones into our national airspace,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said today in a news release.

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