Tag: Drones

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Echodyne gets $29M boost for radar gizmos

Eben Frankenberg with drone
Echodyne CEO Eben Frankenberg shows how one of the company’s flat-panel radar units might fit onto a drone. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen are among the investors putting another $29 million into Echodyne, the Intellectual Ventures spin-out that’s developing low-cost, miniaturized radar systems for drones and self-driving cars.

Echodyne founder and CEO Eben Frankenberg said the Series B funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates, or NEA, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Gates, Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group, the Kresge Foundation and Allen’s Vulcan Capital are among the investors following up on their participation in 2014’s $15 million Series A round, Frankenberg told GeekWire. He declined to say how the new investment affects the valuation of the company, based in Bellevue, Wash.

“The new investment will be used to continue developing the technology,” Frankenberg said.

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Drone sets long-distance delivery record

Latitude HQ-40 drone
A Latitude HQ-40 drone similar to this one was used for the 97-mile test flight in Texas. (BNSF Photo)

Team Roadrunner, a Nevada-based drone consortium, says it set a record for long-distance drone delivery last week in Texas. The team’s fixed-wing drone flew more than 97 miles on May 5, during a circuitous trip that headed southward from Austin and then returned. Visual observers and a mobile command-and-control center guided the drone through the flight corridor using cellular communication links.

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Airbus plans drone deliveries in Singapore

Singapore delivery drone
An artist’s conception shows a delivery drone flying over Singapore. (News Direct via YouTube)

Airbus Helicopters has partnered with Singapore Post for its Skyways drone delivery project, due to begin trials at the National University of Singapore by early 2018. The memorandum of understanding, announced today at the Rotorcraft Asia exhibition in Singapore, follows up on an initial agreement with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.

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Another look at Jeff Bezos’ gee-whiz frontier

New Shepard and drone
An Amazon delivery drone hovers with Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship in the background. (Amazon via Ben Fox Rubin / YouTube)

We already knew that Amazon provided a rare public demonstration of its delivery drone dropping off some sunscreen at this week’s MARS 2017 conference in Palm Springs, Calif. We also knew that Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket ship, which went to space and back five times, was on display at the invitation-only event, organized by Amazon to show off frontier technologies in Machine learning, home Automation, Robotics and Space exploration. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see a fresh video showing the drone at work with the spaceship in the background.

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Drone show wows Amazon’s MARS attendees

Drone display
Intel’s swarm of light-equipped drones arrange themselves to create an American flag in the sky above Amazon’s MARS conference. (Caleb Harper via Twitter)

The synchronized drone display that accompanied Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show may have been recorded in advance, but a similar “droneworks” show wowed a crowd in real time at Amazon’s MARS 2017 conference in Palm Springs, Calif.

“If you thought the Super Bowl drone light show was cool, this tops it,” Sasha Hoffman wrote in a tweet.

Like the Super Bowl’s display, March 20’s evening show was presented by Intel. The company’s CEO, Brian Krzanich, reportedly played a personal part in “bringing out the drones.”

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Amazon delivery drone goes public in U.S.

Amazon delivery drone
An Amazon delivery drone flies around the MARS conference. (Jason Johnson via Periscope

Amazon’s Prime Air drone made its first package delivery in December, in England, but regular folks haven’t seen it in action out in the open here in the States. Until today.

The drone demonstrated its delivery technique during Amazon’s MARS 2017 conference at a resort in Palm Springs, Calif. The merchandise? A box containing sunscreen for the sunny California weather, of course.

Amazon has been providing glimpses of its prototype drones for well more than a year, and the testing continues in the U.S. and Britain as well as other countries. However, the previous peeks we’ve gotten have been professionally packaged videos, created by Amazon.

In contrast, today’s video was basically a smartphone clip shot by Jason Johnson, who’s the founder and CEO of August Home (and an attendee at MARS 2017).

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Amazon patents drone legs and propellers

Drone landing legs
A diagram shows how an Amazon drone could land on a sloping surface while keeping its main frame level, thanks to telescoping landing legs. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

Amazon’s inventors are taking a page from Inspector Gadget’s playbook to design drones with adjustable landing legs and reconfigurable propellers.

Those two design tricks are the focus of patents issued today. It’s hard to say whether they’ll become features on Amazon’s delivery drones, still in development. But surely there’s a chance someone will make use of the innovations, right?

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Drone’s-eye view of SpaceX rocket landing

SpaceX’s first-ever commercial rocket launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center was picture-perfect, but the landing was arguably even more photogenic – or should we say “dronogenic”?

The company’s Falcon 9 rocket quickly rose into the clouds over Launch Pad 39A, the Florida takeoff point for Apollo moon missions and space shuttle flights. Within just a few minutes, SpaceX’s robotic Dragon capsule separated from the rocket and headed toward the International Space Station for a cargo delivery.

Meanwhile, a camera-equipped drone captured a thrilling view of the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster descending through the clouds, firing its engines and touching down on SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1, on the Florida coast not far from where its flight began.

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Amazon’s plan to turn packages into gliders

Amazon drone delivery
An Amazon delivery drone prepares to descend toward its target during a test run in England. One of Amazon’s patents covers a system that would eject packages from as high as 500 feet. (Amazon via YouTube)

Amazon has come up with some wild and crazy patents, but a patent issued today has to rank among the wildest: It calls for turning the packages ejected by its delivery drones into radio-controlled gliders.

The patent application was filed back in 2015, months before the Seattle-based retailing giant unveiled its initial design for delivery drones. There’s no indication that the concept has been incorporated into Amazon’s prototype systems. But don’t be surprised if someday you see your package of potato chips winging its way into your back yard.

The maneuvering system, developed by a team of inventors including Brian Beckman and a trio of Israelis, calls for ejecting the packages from drones while they’re in flight. A spring-loaded shooter, a drogue parachute or a set of actuators could do the trick.

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It’s a bat! It’s a plane! It’s Bat Bot!

Bat Bot
Bat Bot begins. (Ramezani et al. / Caltech / UIUC via Science Robotics)

Holy drone, Batman! Scientists have created a robotic drone with soft, flapping wings that looks and flies like a ghostly bat.

The Bat Bot project, conducted by researchers at Caltech and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, may sound like a Halloween prank gone wild. But there’s a serious point behind the spookiness.

“This robot design will help us build safer and more efficient flying robots, and also give us more insight into the way bats fly,” Soon-Jo Chung, an aerospace professor at Caltech as well as a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a news release.

A research paper describing the project was published online today by the journal Science Robotics.

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