When Richard Van As, a master carpenter in Johannesburg, South Africa, decided to make a set of mechanical fingers, it wasn’t just for fun. He’d lost four of the fingers on his right hand in an unfortunate work accident. For a tradesman like Rich, having a disabled hand is a big professional…

Domestic Use of Drones

...left with a cliffhanger: are you allowed to shoot down a drone if it's over your "airspace" (very end of the…

Testing out how the new Y6 responds to an in-flight motor failure. Not bad!

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We went and filmed the repair works of the stranded Costa Concordia.

Echoing a company belief in autonomous systems, clever algorithms, and replacing fallible humans with smart machines, Google's venture capital arm announced yesterday that it is investing $10.7 million in a company that makes drone brains.…

In order to keep you guys updated on the project's development, I'm happy to present our first flight report!

Andy and his "tripod mop"; Jonathan conducting pre-flight-tests.

The weather conditions were decent: not all that much wind, clear sight and no random short-lived rainfalls.

As we weren't…

In true DIY form I am using as much readily available material as possible. 3/4" oak frame, lego parts, etc. I am on the lookout for landing gear materials (small diameter PVC with small caster wheels maybe? Hmmm.).

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The last week or so we've spent porting a version of the AeroQuad AQ32Plus code over to run on the AshimaCore board. One of our goals has been to get a common board that can run (or has the hooks put in place to run) several of the more popular open source flight controllers. Here's some video (why did we do this at night?) of us flying…

Week #5 of the DIY BoxCopter. 

If you haven't seen any of my videos. This Copter is 100% DIY. It floats, it packs so it can be carried in a backpack. It is made from materials found at any local hardware store. The frame can be made for under $15.00.

Jake

Now standard on the 850Kv AC2830 motors, or as…

I would like to introduce the community to a mixer method used to fly complex aircraft in manual, fly-by-wire and autonomous modes.

The main challenges of mixing are:

• Flexibility to do anything you want.
• Easy to use and prevents…

After Brandon (3DR's Applications Engineer) rescued "Fozzie" from an undisclosed lab at UC Berkeley, the…

Hangar 18 had a very successful first flight of the new F2 prototype on 14 May.  …

By Gary…

I added 6 high power leds on a Naza F550. Leds are controlled with a graupner mx-20 radio, with telemetry. User has the choice of a dozen of effects. A second switch can trigger white leds and/or laser oriented to ground.

All details on …

Photography Drones: Robot Cameras Take to the Skies

      These remote-controlled multi-rotor aircraft can capture amazing footage—and are fast becoming today’s must-have photo accessories   

• By Peter Kolonia on May 13, 2013…