DHL and microdrones are testing drones that could be used to deliver urgently needed goods to hard-to-reach places eg medicines to remote sites.
#Amazon announces plans for drone delivery service, says safety will be key priority Amazon announced yesterday that it is developing a drone delivery service called Prime Air that will aim to get packages into customer hands within 30 minutes.
They are planning to launch as soon as FAA regulations are lifted as early as 2015. Amazon states that safety will be their top priority.
Australian startup Zookal is making news today with their claims to be the worldâ#first drone delivery company.
But while you can quibble over who is really the first commercial drone delivery company
They use drones for delivery and marketing. They are not a drone or robot company.
And thatâ#good! Zookal is a textbook rental startup that also provides a digital note platform and internships for international students.
Zookal are using drones developed by the University of Sydney engineering students and technically Flirtey is the actual drone startup.
Or possibly Vimbra who are managing the logistics partnerships ie between Zookal and Flirtey. However they all have cofounder Ahmed Haider in common.
Textbooks are a great test bed for drone logistics as they are robust reasonably expensive and in demand unlike tacos
and other e-commerce will be much more viable. â#Drones are the first robots to become an off the shelf technology that is wide open for diverse uses with drone delivery
Drones are the gateway for consumer robotics where the robot is a tool that anyone can use.
Flirtey are working in partnership with The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering a nonprofit research institute to develop a set of guidelines for the use of commercial drones. â##We hope to use this guide as a way to work through safety privacy and community concerns locally
This is especially true for a ship#s ballast tanks which are filled with seawater to compensate for weight changes as cargo is loaded and unloaded.
and stiffeners separated by bulkheads ballast tanks form much of a ship#s supporting structure. The surface of ballast tanks is subject to saltwater exposure
and algae accumulation and as a result must be inspected for damage every five years. A standard visual inspection which can only be conducted with the ship in dry-dock after about a two-day venting period serves as a kind of triage for determining
As part of a round-the-year continuous inspection the ship owner decides to use a four-day cruise to inspect part of the ballast tank.
and can model robots including roombas tanks and cars. It has two inputs: forward speed and turning rate.
Some issues prove to be particularly controversial such as the use of robots in warfare or for the care of children or the elderly.
military and security (64%)manufacturing (57%)space exploration (45%)search and rescue (36%)and healthcare (18%.
Most puzzling is that the support for the use of RAS by the military is stronger in the UK than anywhere in Europe despite strong homegrown opposition by UK pressure groups and academics.
 Further research on the views of the public on the applications of RAS in a military
and security context may be useful to assess what UK citizens are comfortable with ranging from troop support in areas such as minesweeping to remote surveillance to fully armed drones.
#Two small drones approved by FAA for civilian use in the US Two small drones Insitu Scan Eagle X200
Both drones have fixed wings weigh less than 55 pounds each and have wingspans of less than 10 feet
Labor saving devices like these new robotic devices are seen as helping fight an inability to secure workers. â##There arenâ##t enough workers to take the available jobs so the robots can come
In Cambodia where unexploded land mines from previous wars remain LIDAR mapping is particularly helpful. Interesting video g
Part  of a session called hose Flying Things (which also features the work of drone ecologist Lian Pin Koh airborne logistics activist Andreas Raptopoulos
Drone app harnesses crowd power to fast-track vision learning in robotic spacecraft Astrodrone is both a simulation game app for the Parrot AR.
and the drone is indeed a toy quad rotor meant for playing games. We thought we could develop a game for the Parrot that would serve as a means for crowdsourcing the data we needed.
Drone is uniquely suitable for this purpose because: It is widely available to the public,
and (on the Parrot AR drone 2. 0) a pressuremeter and magnetometer. Further, it already uses these sensors to achieve accurate onboard state estimation
The code for communicating with Parrot is open source. Methodology The question we faced experimentally was how to couple the real-world object to the virtual space in which the drone would be flying.
Drone is delivered with a marker that is recognized in the images by the onboard firmware. The recognition gives an image position (x, y) and a distance to the marker.
Note, however, that this information is not enough to disambiguate both the position and orientation of the drone with respect to the marker.
because the drone is located on the right of the marker. In the luecase, the marker is in the left part of the image,
because the drone has turned to the right. Note that the distances to the marker are the same.
we perform state estimation on the basis of the drone estimates of its height, speeds, angles,
The heading is estimated quite well on board the drone, where the Parrot AR. Drone 2 also uses a magnetometer.
Figure 2 shows what computational processes are happening on which device during the game. The marker detection and the estimation of the drone attitude, height,
and speeds are performed by the firmware on board the drone. The app is running the drone control interface,
sending and receiving data from the drone, performing state estimation (X y z) with respect to the marker and rendering the 3d world.
Of course, for the experiment we also need to process the drone onboard images. Because of the iphone computational constraints, we decided to save 5 subsequent images
while the player is trying to dock and to process the images after the flight.
This processing now happens when the player visits the highscore table and agrees to join the experiment.
For example, if an ipad or ipod is connected to the drone Wifi, it cannot send its data.
#Quadrocopter Drones from China The market of remote controlled quadrocopter drones is growing fast. The world's first crash avoiding drone comes from Guangzhou Walkera Technology Co. Ltd. a Chinese manufacturer of R c model toys such as helicopters
& aeroplanes that are certified to CE UL and FCC standards. The Walkera Infra X Smart Drone with Crash Avoidance System (CAS) contains a total of 10 sensors 2 Ultrasonic Altitude Sensors on the belly of the drone 8 Infrared Sensors
surrounding the drone body they keep the distance of the Drone from big objects like a Wall or a pile of Big Boxes.
The 2. 4ghz New Generation Radio System is the standard of new generation radio system.
Mind-controlled quadrotor dronemind controlled drones are a hot area for researchers at Zhejiang University in Hangzou China who have adapted a Parrot AR Drone 2. 0 to be operated by an Emotiv EPOC
By thinking left strongly the mind-pilot can make the drone take off; thinking left right and push makes it turn clockwise move forward
More interestingly clenching teeth makes the drone descend while blinking commands it to take a photo o
and recovers easily thanks to new algorithm In August 2014 Google x announced that they had been secretly developing a drone delivery program to rival Amazon Prime Air.
#A new weapon in the fight against cancer Cancer happens when cells in the body start growing uncontrollably.
#Invisible Drones Could Become Reality with New Meta Material Electrical engineers at the University of California in San diego have created a new design for a cloaking device,
Having the ability to create ultimate stealth protection for anything over a battlefield or warzone provides enormous military advantage over the adversary.
which can provide the military with air superiority. While this cloak has numerous applications for the military,
this technology will create a ripple effect beyond the battlefield that will improve the performance of other diverse applications.
Compared to an invisibility cloak, this technology has not only the ability to conceal, but the ability to increase optical communication signal speed
#Russian Parliament Approves Military action in Syria, While US Scales Back Support to Rebels The upper chamber of the Russian parliament has given unanimously a formal consent to President Putin to use the nation military in Syria to fight terrorism at a request from the Syrian President Bashar
Assad. Consent was necessary for deployment of troops for foreign combat missions under the Russian constitution.
Head of the presidential administration Sergey Ivanov stressed that no ground operations are planned in Syria.
Russia would use its warplanes to hit terrorist targets when requested by the Syrian government.
He stressed that unlike the US-led coalition of countries that bombs militant troops in Syria
New software designed for Army medical training allows personnel to see in real-time the effect of their treatments on the bodies of virtual patients and high-tech mannequins.
Combat Medic, developed for the service by Applied Research Associates, places trainees in a 3-D collaborative world where they learn to treat the three injuries most associated with preventable battlefield deaths hemorrhage, blocked
a new ARA software program funded in part by the Army intends to significantly advance that training via a downloadable hysiology enginethat allows medical personnel see how their actions affect every other aspect of their patient physiology.
Carter said. hat the Army is hoping is that this physiology engine becomes the standard for physiology simulations,
so that anybody in the future who creates a medical training game for the military can take and use Biogears in that.?
Matthew Hackett, science and technology manager with the Army Research Laboratory. This software allows anyone in the military, Dod-wide,
to take this as a building block for simulation and not have to do that from scratch every single time. his means a cost savings to the military,
since programs will not have to be rebuilt each time for different kinds of simulations, he said. It also good from the industry standpoint because,
#NASA's drone is part chopper, part airplane Answer: NASA'S latest drone prototype, GL-10.
Better known by it's pop culture-inspired moniker, Greased Lightning, it is an innovative new concept for an unmanned vehicle (UAV) from NASA's Langley Research center in Hampton, Virginia.
The battery-powered drone has a 10-foot (3-meter) wingspan, 10 electric motors (eight on the wings,
as well as demonstrating the drone at various NASA events throughout the year. More from Tomorrow Transforme e
The idea is to create limbs made up of cells from the amputee's own body to produce an armor one day leg--tailored to them
Recently, researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm of the U s. military,
Walmart could start using drones to start delivering things to your house Amazon and Walmart have been jockeying for position in the battle to be the number one U s. retailer.
Now it looks like they'll take that battle to the skies as Walmart joins the online retailer in a quest to use a legion of drones for product deliveries and pickups.
According to Reuters, which saw a copy of a Walmart's Federal aviation administration application for drone use.
The application would allow Walmart to use drones at its warehouses and around customershomes and the reports suggests the giant retailer is ready to start flying drones as soon as the FAA settles on its new rules for commercial drone use.
Earlier this month, the FAA unveiled a new set of rules for private drone use that include registering many of the drones with the FAA before consumers start flying them.
For commercial drones, which could be used in everything from filming movies to delivering groceries, the FAA has been considering some line-of-sight provisions that could make it virtually impossible for Amazon
and now Walmart to use drones in home deliveries. According to the report Walmart plans to use drones from DJI to monitor inventories outside their warehouses,
deliver packages to customers, many of whom live within five miles of their local Walmart,
and to deliver groceries to pick up locations for customers. DJI is one of the most popular drone makers on the market,
with a line of Phantom drones, including the Phantom 3 Standard, which Mashable recently test drove (or flew)."
"Drones have a lot of potential to further connect our vast network of stores, distribution centers, fulfillment centers and transportation fleet,
"Walmart spokesperson Dan Toporek told Reuters. Of course, no one not Amazon and not Walmart is delivering anything by drone until the FAA finalizes its commercial plans,
something that won't happen until next year, at the earliest. That's way late for your last-minute Christmas shopping plans,
which could reasonably be assisted by drone deliveries. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments o
#Second Deadly Quake Hits Nepal Near Everest At least 16 people were killed in a new earthquake that struck devastated Nepal on Tuesday, according to a bulletin from the country's disaster agency.
"Nepalese police urged people to stay outside and avoid jamming the fragile cellphone network.""Please stay in open field,
"said a message from the national police service's Twitter account. Nepal's National Emergency Operation center tweeted:"
#Military's Prosthetic Hand Can Feel Researchers fitted a man who has been paralyzed for more than a decade with an experimental prosthetic hand that lets him"feel"sensations,
the US military's futuristic development department said. Scientists wired electrodes into the 28-year-old patient's sensory cortex,
or DARPA, the branch of the U s. Department of defense that dreams up new military technologies. But robotic landing gear developed for DARPA at the Georgia Institute of technology (Georgia Tech) could better equip these aircraft to land just about anywhere.
The agency said these improved capabilities can"greatly expand"the effectiveness of helicopters used for both military and nonmilitary purposes u
Finally, China announced that it will use $3. 1 billion to help developing countries combat climate change. oday
Tractor beams have been a reliable staple in science fiction movies like tar Wars, where theye used to reel in uncooperative Rebel blockade runners and pesky Corellian freighters.
#Researchers identify new target for anti-malaria drugs A new target for drug development in the fight against the deadly disease malaria has been discovered by researchers at MIT.
the researchers unveil how one of a battery of chemical warfare agents used by the immune system to fight off infection can itself create DNA mutations that lead to cancer.
Spivak acknowledges support by the Air force Office of Scientific research and the Office of Naval Research.
Buehler and Giesa acknowledge support by the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office,
This approach could generate new weapons against bacteria for which there are no effective antibiotics, says Timothy Lu,
allowing you to interact with a game from different rooms or even trigger distinct actions based on
"Trustwavehich helps firms fight cybercrime, protect their data and reduce security riskas three million business subscribers served by 1, 200 employees in 26 countries.
and select which one can be developed into drugs to fight against diseases. The device was developed at Bath by researchers Dr Pedro Estrela and Phd student Nikhil Bhalla in the Department of Electronic & Electrical engineering, Dr Mirella Di Lorenzo in the Department of Chemical engineering,
She plans to attend the payload launch at the Cape canaveral Air force station Kennedy space center with her 12-year-old son Carl,
is already bound by strict ethical regulations that bar it from investing in"particularly inhumane"weapons makers,
A war zone might be considered a remote location. In conducting his research, Agah identified a problem that allowed him to develop his new technology.
Their insights could lead to ways to control this shield and improve its efficiency, which could help curb the risk of unwanted infections in agricultural or garden plants,
The International PV Quality assurance Task force (PVQAT) was formed in 2011 to develop standards to help customers quickly assess a PV product's ability to withstand regional stresses
also leads NREL's participation in the International PV Quality assurance Task force. The task force was formed to develop standards ore The first leg of the stool in assuring reliability is a durable design, one that holds up to its intended application,
whether that is in the deserts of the American Southwest or in a snowy mountain range. To that end, qualification tests should
"Assuring solar modules will last for decades The International PV Quality assurance Task force is developing a comprehensive set of standards that includes:
so a computerized ATLAS hardware"trigger system"grabs the data, makes a fast evaluation, decides if it might hold something of interest to physicists,
"This trigger hardware system makes measurements but they are very crude, fast and primitive.""To further pare down the data,
helped develop software to monitor the performance of the trigger systems'thousands of computer processors."
construction and delivery of the ATLAS"readout"system an electronic system within the ATLAS trigger system that sends collision data from ATLAS to its data processing farm.
"The F/A-18 Hornet became the U s. Navy and Marine corps'first strike fighter in 1978;
"As private companies and the military continue to look to advanced composites for new aerospace and other applications,
"The group has, over the past 20 years, used various robots to test over 150 different material systems, with potential applications for ballistic missiles to rocketry to automobile manufacturing."
The lab has tested over 150 different material systems, with potential applications for ballistic missiles to rocketry to automobile manufacturing.
"I do have a genuine desire to see my group grow in a way that creates value for the military and society in general,
and has developed'Warrior'strains capable of infecting individuals previously believed to have tolerance.""Mario Caccamo, senior author of the paper, said:"
Singapore and Taiwan, fuelling fears of a currency war. On Wednesday, Vietnam devalued the dong for the third time this year as authorities sought to support a languid export sector facing fresh challenges from the Chinese devaluation n
#Edible Oil Producers Fight Battle Against Cheap Palm oil Imports Dewas: Rajesh Agrawal had built two large oilseed crushing mills in central India,
and virtually no history of war in its 1100 years said Kristinn R. Thórisson, IIIM Managing director. ike any other technology,
It clear that the nonprofit IIIM has launched its policy not only to publicise its anti-military stance,
adamantly and publicly oppose autonomous weapons. Last May, a meeting was organised at the UN to assess the ethical and sociological questions that arise from their development and deployment,
In July, the Future of Life Institute released an open document calling for a ban on autonomous weapons.
There are, as yet, no agreements or even proposals to ban autonomous weapons, but discussions in the UN are ongoing.
but the institute has made undoubtedly a brave decision in rejecting the billions of dollars of contracts thrown at the military weapons industries.
The moral, ethical and legal arguments against weapons that can make decisions about who to kill will rubble on.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Air force Office for Scientific research, and the Army Research Office f
#Researchers Reveal How Chronic Inflammation Can Lead to Cancer Chronic inflammation caused by disease or exposure to dangerous chemicals has long been linked to cancer,
the researchers unveil how one of a battery of chemical warfare agents used by the immune system to fight off infection can itself create DNA mutations that lead to cancer.
a chemical change triggers the generation of oxygen-carrying molecules known as reactive oxygen species (ROS). If a sunscreen agents penetrate the skin,
researchers from the University of Montreal have taken a major step forward in the fight against age-related macular degeneration.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U s. Air force Office of Scientific research and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan n
#See through Walls by the Glow of Your Wi-fi It used to be that a bad guy besieged by police could just shoot out the lights and hide in the dark.
but unlike radar theye not confused by the kinds of angled surfaces that make the stealth fighter so stealthy.
work sponsored by Universal Display Corporation and the U s. Air force. The researchers added their new lights nearly meet the most stringent requirements of the National Television systems Committee (NTSC),
Automated crowd counting could also prove increasingly potent with the growing use of aerial drone surveillance,
whether in the hands of civilian authorities or militaries i
#The New Wrinkle in Graphene Is Wrinkles One of the holy grails of graphene research has been a method for achieving wafer-scale growth of wrinkle-free single-crystal monolayer graphene on a silicon wafer.
With these technology shifts, exciting technologies like drones, AI, satellite mapping, robotics, and the Internet of things, have realized quickly that the agriculture value chain provides fertile first market opportunities for many technologies that are advanced not enough or have not yet found solutions in the consumer space.
Already this year, wee seen a $50m investment into drone maker 3d Robotics and a $95m investment into microsatellite company Planet Labs, both of which count agriculture as key early market opportunities.
#Airware Launches Its Commercial Drone Operating system Drones could save businesses big money by doing dull, dirty,
The problem is that drones can be difficult to program and pilot. Airware is out to change that with today launch of its Aerial Information Platform.
Ground Control Station for dispatching drones, and its cloud platform for customizing missions and collecting data.
the four year-old Airware is perhaps Silicon valley premier drone startup. Airware integrated hardware software, and cloud system lets enterprises customize drones to check on gas pipelines,
survey farm land, inspect cell towers, patrol property, or do search & rescue, Now wel see just how many businesses will pay a monthly subscription for Airware to power their drones for industrial inspections, agriculture management, anti-poaching, and more.
Consumer drone makers are growing fast as quadcopters become the hot new toy for kids and adults alike.
China DJI is said to be raising money at a $10 billion valuation. But long-term, theyl likely be commoditized as hardware makers around the globe clone
It the way drones improve efficiency for heavy industry that could be the enduring moneymaker.
Whatever companies makes the software that runs these drones would make serious profits for years to come.
and a handful of reporters from San francisco to an isolated farm in Petaluma, where the startup showed off its platform with a variety of drones built for different use cases.
The company hoped to demonstrate how its system can be customized to let any drone do any job.
the Ground Control Station that lets a single user operate a fleet of drones from a Windows laptop or tablet,
Rather than having to pre-program a drone, manually pilot it, and then painstakingly dump the data back to your servers,
The goal is to reduce the drone piloting expertise needed to get complicated missions flown.
enhance it with cloud widgets to customize their drone to the day use case, and the data flows back automatically.
Operators can just trace a flight path on a map instead of driving the drone in real-time.
the startup had several of its biggest customers speak about their use of the platform in their own drones.
French drone company Delta Drone showed of its drone capabilities for surveying farmland and dig sites using flight plans generated Airware Ground Control Station.
Users simply draw out a geofence for the drone to stay within and give it parameters like required altitude.
It wasn the flashiest demo wee ever seen with a drone after taking off it went to a set height
But commercial drone use isn supposed to be sexy. It supposed to get the job done safe, fast, and cheap.
After several similar demos, Drone America CEO Mike Richards spoke about using his company larger drones with Airware software for missions outside of traditional industrial uses.
replacing lifeguards at beaches with drones carrying floatation devices that can identify people in distress.
One of the new things shown off during these demos was support for fixed-wing drones,
launching via a catapult, flying several quick passes around the the whole area, and landing with a couple of bounces on the thick grass.
Instead of requiring customers to build their own app with the exact drone interface needed, building on Windows will allow them to download the same app to each tablet
Essentially, third-parties will be able to develop plug-ins to let drones handle even more niche missions. Little Copters, Big Business This is
since theye mostly industrial or nterpriseclients who already have their own drones, there no need to offer a free tier just yet
Airware costs $2500 per drone per year. But the company doesn have to race to revenue just yet.
Drones are more than just war machines. Downey grew up the son of pilots, then built his own drones at MIT.
Now his company Airware is going to teach them to do our bidding, and even save some lives g
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