Archive 16.05.2017

May 8, 2017 – May 14, 2017

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News

The International Civil Aviation Organization announced that it plans to develop global standards for small unmanned aircraft traffic management. In a statement at the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s Xponential trade conference, the United Nations agency said that as part of the initiative it has issued a Request for Information on air traffic management systems for drones. (GPS World)

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has created a new office dedicated to drones and autonomous systems. According to Gov. McAuliffe, the Autonomous Systems Center for Excellence will serve as a “clearinghouse and coordination point” for research and development programs related to autonomous technologies. (StateScoop)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At the Telegraph, Alan Tovey writes that the U.K.’s exit from the European Union is unlikely to affect cross-channel cooperation on developing fighter drones.

At the Dead Prussian Podcast, Ulrike Franke discusses the role that drones currently play in the military.

At IHS Jane’s 360, Daniel Wasserbly writes that the U.S. Marine Corps will slow its acquisition of the Boeing Insitu Blackjack drone.

At the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, James Rogers argues that the Trump administration policy on drones is “likely to prove counterproductive.”

At IEEE Spectrum, David Schneider examines state and local drone regulations.

In the Journal of Archaeological Science, Sean Field, Matt Waite, and LuAnn Wandsnider consider the utility of drones for archeological surveys.

At RJI Online, Jennifer Nelson looks at what a television station in Idaho is learning about using drones for news coverage.

A report by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights considers the “impact of drone attacks on law, warfare and society.”

At The New York Times, William Grimes visits “Drones: Is the Sky the Limit?,” a new exhibition at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

In a paper in the International Organization journal, Matthew Fuhrmann and Michael C. Horowitz consider the reasons that states acquire drones.

At Bloomberg, Justin Bachman looks at how different companies are seeking an advantage in managing data from drones for commercial purposes.

At the Associated Press, Dario Lopez and Joshua Goodman write about a U.S. Coast Guard program using drones to counter maritime smuggling.

In a speech at the Xponential 2017 trade show, Intel Corporation CEO Brian Krzanich argued that data will be the most significant aspect of the drone industry. (AUVSI)

At the South China Morning Post, Li Tao writes that China’s popular consumer drone brands are increasingly turning to the commercial sector.

At Defense One, Marcus Weisgerber writes that the Pentagon is using machine-learning to help identify ISIS targets.

Know Your Drone

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology unveiled the Saqr 1, an armed drone with a range of up to 2,500 km. (IHS Jane’s 360)  

U.S. drone maker AeroVironment unveiled the Snipe, a nano quadcopter that weighs just 150 grams. (New Atlas)

In a test, startup Volans-i flew a delivery drone along a 100-mile route in Texas, a new record for a drone delivery. (Tech Crunch)

Energy firm twingtec is developing a tethered drone that harvests power from the wind. (Design Boom)

The U.S. Army is seeking a midsize cargo drone that could operate with a high level of autonomy. (FlightGlobal)

Nautilus, a California startup, is developing a cargo drone that could carry thousands of pounds of goods over long distances. (Air & Space Magazine)

Drone maker Pulse Aerospace unveiled two new rotorcraft drones for military and commercial applications, the Radius 65 and the Vapor 15. (Press Release)

Piaseki Aerospace will likely submit its ARES demonstrator drone for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Unmanned Expeditionary Capabilities program. (FlightGlobal)

Turkish defense firm Aselsan has unveiled two new counter-drone systems. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Defense firm Kratos confirmed that it has conducted several demonstration flights of a high performance jet drone for an undisclosed customer. (FlightGlobal)

Technology firm Southwest Research Institute has been granted a patent for a system by which military drones can collaborate with unmanned ground vehicles. (Unmanned Aerial Online)

The U.S. Army is interested in developing a mid-size unmanned cargo vehicle that could carry up to 800 pounds of payload. (FlightGlobal)

A student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design has created a drone designed to help parents track their children. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

French drone maker Parrot is set to begin developing a line of prosumer drones. (Recode)

Defense firm Qinetiq has announced that it will pursue the U.S. Army’s Lightweight Reconnaissance Robot program. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The U.S. Army is seeking a replacement engine for the RQ-7 Shadow tactical drone. (FlightGlobal) 

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have been crashing autonomous drones repeatedly in order to teach them how to avoid crashing. (IEEE)

An Air Force investigation found that the cause of the crash of an MQ-9 Reaper drone in Nevada last summer was pilot error. (Press Release)

A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency press release describes in detail its recent military academy swarming competition.

Raytheon announced that it has installed ground-based sense-and-avoid systems at a number of air bases in the U.S. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The Digital Circuit has put together a compilation of images of some of the more interesting drones at this year’s Xponential drone conference.

Drones at Work

A drone flying over a bike race in in Rancho Cordova, California crashed into a cyclist. (Market Watch)

Meanwhile, a consumer drone crashed into a car crossing the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia. It is the second time a drone has crashed at the site of the bridge in the past nine months. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Insurance company Travelers has trained over 150 drone operators to use drones for insurance appraisals over properties. (Insurance Journal)

Kazakhstan’s armed forces displayed a number of its recently acquired unmanned aircraft during a military parade. (IHS Jane’s 360)

A Latvian technology firm used a large multirotor drone to carry a skydiver to altitude before he parachuted back down to earth. (Phys.org)

Clear Flight Solutions and AERIUM Analytics are set to begin integrating the Robird drone system, a falcon-like drone that scares birds away from air traffic, at Edmonton International Airport. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Army awarded General Atomics Aeronautical Systems a $221.6 million contract modification for 20 extended range Gray Eagle drones and associated equipment. (DoD)

The U.S. Air Force awarded General Electric a $14 million contract for work that includes the Thermal Management System for unmanned aircraft. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Boeing Insitu a $8.1 million contract for spare parts for the RQ-21A Blackjack. (DoD)

The United Arab Emirates awarded Canada-based CAE a contract estimated at $40.9 million to train drone operators. (UPI)

Airbus opened a subsidiary in Atlanta that will sell imagery from satellites and drones to commercial clients. (AIN Online)

Turkish Aerospace Industries will begin cooperating with ANTONOV Company on the development of unmanned systems. (Press Release)

Aker, a company that develops drones for agriculture, won $950,000 in funding from the Clean Energy Trust Challenge. (Chicago Tribune)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

JD Claridge’s story epitomizes the current state of the drone industry. Claridge, founder of xCraft, is best known for being the first contestant on Shark Tank to receive money from all the Sharks – even Kevin O’Leary! Walking the floor of Xponential 2017, the annual convention of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems Integration (AUVSI), Claridge remarked to me how the drone industry has grown up since his TV appearance.

Claridge has gone from pitching cellphone cases that turn into drones (aka phonedrone) to solving mission critical problems. The age of fully autonomous flight is near and the drone industry is finally recovering from the hangover of overhyped Kickstarter videos (see Lily drone’s $34 million fraud). xCraft’s pivot to lightweight, power efficient, enterprise drones is an example of this evolved marketplace. During the three days of Xponential 2017, several far-reaching announcements were made between stalwarts of the tech industry and aviation startups. Claridge introduced me to his new partner, Rajant, which is a leader in industrial wireless networks. xCraft’s latest models utilize Rajant’s mesh networks to launch swarms of drones with one controller. More drones flying simultaneously enables users to maximize the flight time limitations of lithium batteries by covering greater areas within a single mission.

Bob Schena, Rajant’s CEO, said, “Rajant’s network technology now makes it possible for one pilot to operate many aircrafts concurrently, with flight times of 45 minutes. We’re pleased to partner with xCraft and bring more intelligence, mobility and autonomy to UAV communication infrastructures covering greater aerial distances while supporting various drone payloads.”

The battery has been the Achilles heel of the small drone industry since inception. While large winged craft relies heavily on fossil fuels, multirotor battery-operated drones have been plagued with shorter missions of under 45 minutes. Innovators like Claridge are leading the way for a new wave of creative solutions:

Solar Powered Wings 

Airbus showcased its Zephyr drone products or HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite) UAVs using solar-winged craft for power. Zephyr UAVs can fly for months at a time, saving thousands of tons of fuel. The HAPS also offers a number of lightweight payload options from voice communications to persistent internet to real-time surveillance. Airbus was not the only solar solution on display; there were a handful of Chinese upstarts and solar cell purveyors for retrofitting existing aircrafts.

Hybrid Fuel Solutions  

In the Startup Pavilion, William Fredericks of the Advanced Aircraft Company (AAC) demoed a novel technology using a hybrid of diesel fuel and lithium batteries with flexible fixed wings and multirotors, resulting in over 3 hours of flying time. AAC’s prototype, the Hercules (above) is remarkably lightweight and fast. Fredricks is an aircraft designer by trade with 12 designs flying in the air, including NASA’s Greased Lightning that looks remarkably similar to Boeing’s Osprey. The Hercules is available for sale on the company’s website for multiple use cases, including: agricultural, first responders, and package delivery. It is interesting to note that a few rows from Frederick’s booth was his former employer, NASA, promoting their new Autonomy Incubator for “intelligent flight systems” and its “autonomy innovation lab,” (definitely an incubator to watch).

Vertical Take Off & Landing

In addition to hybrid fuel strategies, entrepreneurs are also rethinking the launch procedures. AAC’s Hercules and XCraft’s commercial line of drones vertically takeoff to reduce wind resistance and maximize energy consumption. Australian Startup Iridium Dynamics takes this approach to a new level with astonishing results. Its winged craft, Halo, uses a patent-pending “hover thrust” of its entire craft so its wings actually create the vertical lift to hover with minimal power. The drone also has two rotors to fly horizontally. According to Dion Gonano, Control Systems Engineer, it can fly for over 2 hours. The Halo also lands vertically into a stationary mechanical arm. While the website lists a number of commercial applications for this technology, it was unclear in my discussions with Gonano if they have deployed this technology in real tests.

New Charging Efficiencies

Prior to Xponential, Seattle-based WiBotic announced the closing of its $2.5 seed round to fund its next generation of battery charging technologies. The company has created a novel approach to wireless inductive charging for robotics. Its wireless inductive charging platform includes a patent-pending auto detect feature that can begin recharging once the robot enters the proximity of the base station, even during flight. According to Dr. Ben Waters, (CEO), its charge is faster than traditional solutions presently on the market. Dr. Waters demonstrated for me its suite of software tools that monitor battery performance, providing clients with a complete power management analytics platform. WiBotic is already piloting its technology with leading commercial customers in the energy and security sectors. WiBotic is the first inductive charging platform; other companies have created innovating battery-swapping techniques. Airobotics unique drone storage box that is deployed currently at power plants in Israel, includes a robotic arm, housed inside, that services the robot post flight by switching out the payload and battery:

Reducing Payload Weight

In addition to aircraft design, payload weight is a big factor of battery drain. A growing trend within the industry is miniaturizing the size and cost of the components. Ultimately, the mission of a drone is directly related to the type of payload from cameras for collecting images to precise measurements using Light Detection and Ranging sensors (or Lidar). Lidar is typically deployed in autonomous vehicles to provide the most precise position for the robot in a crowded area, like a self-driving car on the road. However, Lidar is currently extremely expensive and large for many multirotor surveys. Chris Brown of Z-Senz, a former scientist with the The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), hopes to change the landscape of drones with his miniaturized Lidar sensor. Brown’s reduced sensor, SKY1, offers major advantages for size, weight, and power consumption without losing accuracy of high distance sensing. A recent study estimates the Lidar market is expected to exceed $5 billion by 2022, with Velodyne and Quanergy already gaining significant investment. Z-Senz is aiming to be commercially available by 2018.

Lidar is not the only measuring methodology, Global Positioning Solutions (GPS) have been deployed widely. Two of the finalists of the Xponetial Startup Showdown were startups focused on reducing GPS chip sizes and increasing functionality. Inertial Sense has produced a chip the size of a dime that is capable of housing an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS), and GPS-aided Inertial Navigation System (INS). Their website claims that their “advanced algorithms fuse output from MEMs inertial sensors, magnetometers, barometric pressure, and a high-sensitivity GPS (GNSS) receiver to deliver fast, accurate, and reliable attitude, velocity, and position even in the most dynamic environments.” The chips and micro navigation accessories are available on the company’s e-store.

The winner of the Showdown, uAvionix, is a leading developer of avionics for both manned and unmanned flight. Their new transceivers and transponders claim to be “the smallest, and lightest and most affordable on the market” (already GPS is a commodity). uAvionix presented its “Ping Network System that reduces weight on average by 40% as compared to the two-piece installations.” The Ping products also claim barometric altitude precision with accuracy beyond 80,000 ft.

Paul Beard, CEO of uAvionix, said, “our customers have asked for even smaller and lighter solutions; integrating the transceivers, GPS receivers, GPS antennas, and barometric pressure sensors into a single form factor facilitates easier installation and lowers weight and power draw requirements resulting in a longer usable flight time.”

As I rushed to the airport to catch my manned flight, I felt reenergized about the drone industry, although follies will persist. I mean who wouldn’t want a pool deckchair drone this summer?

This and all other autonomous subjects will be explored at RobotLabNYC’s next event with Dr. Howard Morgan (FirstRound Capital) and Tom Ryden (MassRobotics) – RSVP.