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Several Belgian cities take the lead in the use of drones in emergency situations by joining the Urban Air Mobility initiative of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP-SCC), supported by the European Commission. Ghent and Brussels have already signed the Manifesto.

July 16, 2018. Melbourne, FL– Today, Florida-based Autonomous Aerial Systems (AAS) company Aeronyde and Belgian Unmanned Traffic Management provider Unifly announced a partnership to bring advanced UAV technology to emergency responders. The companies will integrate Unifly’s Unmanned Traffic Management services, along with Aeronyde’s system for Autonomous flight, to create an efficient self-flying system for police and fire departments.

The Aeronyde-Unifly partnership will create an autonomous system to enable emergency responders to scale their drone operations. The resulting system will offer on-demand dispatching of registered and authorized drones, and will deliver real-time situational awareness of scenes of distress.

Shenzhen, China – June 11th, 2018 – Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd and Unifly N.V have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to cooperate in the field of Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) systems. The MoU covers both research and development, and a joint market approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS, or drone) management.

BAE Systems and Prismatic, two British aerospace firms, are developing a drone supposedly capable of remaining in the sky for an entire year at high altitudes. The drone could be described as a High Altitude, Long Endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Airbus has recently demonstrated the first ever automated drone-based, innovative aircraft maintenance tool at the MRO Americas exposition in Florida. The exposition is a gathering of aviation maintenance professionals from around the world. Airbus’ Advanced Inspection Drone is to be operated inside a hangar, capable of accelerating and facilitating visual checks, considerably reducing aircraft downtime and increasing the quality of inspection reports.

The drone industry is growing at a rapid pace, which means the safe integration of drones into airspace is of the utmost importance. Therefore SESAR, the mechanism which coordinates and concentrates all EU R&D activities in ATM, is making an effort to make this happen in a safe and efficient manner through the U-Space projects.

Aquabotix, an underwater robotics company operating in Australia and the U.S., recently released a hybrid between a ‘micro unmanned surface vehicle’ (USV) and an ‘unmanned underwater vehicle’ (UUV) or simply put; an underwater drone, like the MantaDroid we’ve seen earlier. The vehicles operate in swarm and they’re called SwarmDivers™. They are able to function simultaneously as a single coordinated entity, they can be controlled by a single operator and they can perform (vertical) dives to collect valuable data and intelligence.

Across many industries, the advantages of data gathering via drones are well known. A surveying method called ‘LIDAR’, which stands for ‘light detection and ranging’, is an effective tool to gather crucial data for a variety of applications. It measures the distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor. The differences in return times and wavelengths are then used to make 3D representations of the target.

Mounting such a LIDAR unit onto a drone has often proved to be a bit of a challenge however. For this reason, 3D Target has developed a solution to this problem.

An Air New Zealand flight came very close to hitting a drone during its descent into Auckland Airport from Tokyo on March 25th. The pilots of flight NZ92 spotted the drone about 5m or 16ft from the aircraft at a point in their descent when it was impossible to take evasive action.