News

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.

In an effort to fight cholera in Malawi, UNICEF took the initiative to use drones to scout villages from above. This allows detailed photographs to be taken through mapping software. The resulting maps are then looked at alongside villagers to gain a better view of how infection sources could best be fought.