From Mashable

By Chris Perkins

If for some reason you think the lack of drone regulation in the U.S. isn't a problem, read this.

The Washington Post obtained records from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) detailing nearly 700 close calls between drones and airplanes in the U.S. in 2015. Over 70 close calls have been recorded between Aug. 1-17.

A government official anonymously provided the Washington Post with these documents because they disagreed with the FAA's level of secrecy. The report notes that the FAA has declined to release public reports on these incidents.

The near-700 close calls between drones and airplanes is three times higher than the same figure in 2014.

Drones aren't legally allowed to fly above 400 feet or within five miles of an airport, but the FAA is mostly powerless to enforce this.

While there hasn't yet been a collision with a drone and an airplane, it doesn't take much imagination to explore the potential hazards. A bird strike has the potential to bring down an aircraft, as was the case with 2009's "Miracle on the Hudson", so one could reasonably assume a small drone could do similar damage.

The issue here is that unmanned arial vehicles (UAV), in their current state, are almost impossible to track: they aren't detected by radar and many aren't equipped with devices to transmit their location. It's nearly impossible to catch the culprits, too, since they are likely flying their UAVs from a distance.

Much of the work towards developing a practical system has actually been carried out by NASA and other private entities like Verizon and Amazon, not the FAA.

Many of the regulation plans being floated involve the use of "geofencing" in some capacity. With geofencing, all drones would be required to connect to the Internet and certain areas would be virtually fenced off, preventing UAV flight. Drones would also be required to register with a central governing agency.

The main issue with the NASA/Verizon and Amazon plans is that not all drones are Internet connected, so older drones would need to be retrofitted or banned outright. Of course, geofencing wouldn't prevent rouge operators to fly unconnected drones, but it'd be a step toward bringing order to the current situation.

Full article here

The C-Enduro is powered by solar panels, a wind turbine and a diesel engine (Credit: ASV)

By Ben Coxworth - August 20, 2015

Have you ever wondered why the Celtic Sea, located off the south coast of Ireland, is home to so many marine predators? No? Well, scientists at Britain’s National Oceanography Centre have. This month they set about finding out, using a long-endurance autonomous surface vehicle known as the C-Enduro.

"The Celtic Sea contains known hotspots for iconic and highly mobile marine animals such as the mighty fin whale," says project coordinator Prof. Russell Wynn. "However, we need a greater density of observations to really understand why these hotspots are so attractive to these animals … Marine robotic technologies give us the opportunity to have a persistent presence in these areas, and are changing the way in which we conduct science in the marine environment."

That’s where the C-Enduro comes in.

Made by ASV Unmanned Marine Systems, the 350-kg (772-lb) solar, wind and diesel-powered catamaran was launched from the Welsh town of Milford Haven on August 20th. For this particular study, it’s equipped with GoPro cameras, marine mammal acoustic detectors and a meteorological station.

Because it draws power from solar panels and a wind turbine, it could potentially remain at sea for up to three months, with its two brushless motors providing a maximum speed of 7 knots (13 km/h or 8 mph) via two propulsion pods. Even if it capsizes during that period, its self-righting carbon fiber hull should quickly get it back upright.

Although the craft is autonomous, ASV will be controlling some aspects of its operation by satellite from the company’s base in the English village of Portchester. An onboard collision-avoidance system will help keep the vessel from running into other watercraft.

The study is partially supported by the World Wildlife Fund, and also involves the use of an autonomous Slocum submarine glider. You can see the C-Enduro in action, in the silent video below.

Full article here C-Enduro

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By Ben Coxworth - August 14, 2015

If you should encounter a crewless ship out on the Atlantic Ocean in a few years, don’t worry about it being the ghostly Flying Dutchman … it may be the Mayflower, however. No, not the square-rigger that brought Pilgrims to America, but the Mayflower Autonomous Research Ship (MARS). Plans call for the wind- and solar-powered trimaran to sail itself from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 2020 – the 400th anniversary of the original ship’s journey – carrying out a variety of research projects along the way.

It will be 32.5 meters long and 16.8 meters across (106.6 x 55.1 ft), with a glass/aramid/foam composite hull and a carbon composite deck. Using either or both of its two sails, MARS will be able to move at a speed of up to 20 knots (37 km/h or 23 mph). On less breezy days when the sails are automatically stowed belowdeck, its solar-powered electric motor will still take it up to 12.5 knots (23 km/h or 14 mph). The solar cells should be able to generate enough current that if traveling at 5 knots (9 km/h or 6 mph) under motor power, the ship’s range will be unlimited. Some of those cells will be on a folding wing, that will only open under calm sea conditions.

Navigation will be via a combination of GPS, and onboard collision-avoidance systems.

According to MSubs’ Brett Phaneuf, the crossing could conceivably be completed in 7 to 10 days, although it may end up lasting several months depending on what tasks MARS is put to along the way. Areas of research that it will be conducting include meteorology, oceanography and climatology.

Full article here MARS

The first, JetBlue Flight 1843, reported spotting a drone at 2:24 p.m. while approaching John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. In the audio recording, the cockpit says that the drone passed just below the planes nose when the jet was flying at an altitude of about 800 to 900 feet.

Then at about 5 p.m., Delta Flight 407 -- which had 154 people on board -- was preparing to land when the cockpit reported seeing a drone below its right wing.

Both planes landed safely and each incident are being investigated by the FAA, though it's unclear whether the two incidents are related.

Full story here Drone/Airliner close call

Bas-Vully, Switzerland (AFP) July 7, 2015 - Wondering where your package is? Look up!

Switzerland's postal service said Tuesday it had begun testing parcel deliveries by unmanned drones, although widespread use of the flying postmen is not likely to kick in for another five years.

Postal service executives showed off the drones for the first time Tuesday and said initial tests of the machines' post-delivery abilities would run until the end of July.

The snow-white drones consist of four branches with propellers on the end extending from a hollow ring the size of a toilet seat. A yellow box, bearing the postal service logo, is lodged in the middle.

"The drone has an extremely light construction and is capable of transporting loads of up to one kilo (2.2 pounds) over more than 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) with a single battery charge," Swiss Post said in a statement.

The drone "flies autonomously, following clearly defined, secure flight paths, which are drawn up by cloud software developed by Matternet (the drone's US manufacturer)", Swiss Post added.

Swiss Post, which is cooperating on the project with Swiss WorldCargo -- the air freight division of Swiss International Air Lines --, stressed that the drones would be thoroughly tested before being put to wide-scale use.

"Until the time of their realistic commercial use in around five years, there are various requirements which need to be clarified," the statement said.

This includes exploring the regulatory framework that would apply when sending the unmanned aircraft out across the Alpine country, which is dotted with numerous remote and isolated villages where drone deliveries could be useful.

Swiss Post also said extensive tests would be carried out to explore the technical restrictions of the drones, including limited battery life.

For now, Swiss Post said it expects to mainly use the drones in emergency situations, which could "involve bringing supplies to an area that has been cut off from the outside world following a storm."

"Another realistic possibility is the urgent transport of consignments with the highest priority, such as laboratory tests," it added.

Switzerland is not the only place where package-delivering drones could soon appear.

Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, announced in late 2013 a plan to airlift small parcels to customers by drone in select markets, less than 30 minutes after an order is received.

But the company warned last month that proposed US rules regulating the use of civilian drones could block it from launching the service, and called for them to be overhauled.

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By Michael Martinez, Paul Vercammen and Ben Brumfield, CNN

Five such "unmanned aircraft systems" prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas.

Helicopters couldn't drop water because five drones hovered over the blaze, creating hazards in smoky winds for a deadly midair disaster, officials said.

The North Fire torched 20 vehicles on Interstate 15 and incited panic among motorists who fled on foot on the freeway Friday. The wildfire continued to burn uncontrollably Saturday, scorching 3,500 acres with only 5% containment in San Bernardino County.

Drones hovering over wildfires is a new trend in California, and on Saturday, fire officials condemned the operators of "hobby drones," as officials labeled them. It was unclear Saturday whether authorities would launch an investigation into the five drones.

"Fortunately, there were no injuries or fatalities to report, but the 15 to 20 minutes that those helicopters were grounded meant that 15 to 20 minutes were lost that could have led to another water drop cycle, and that would have created a much safer environment and we would not have seen as many citizens running for their lives," said spokesman Eric Sherwin of the San Bernardino County Fire Department.

Full story here Drones cause a hazard

It's customary and traditional that we celebrate the addition of every 1,000 new members here and share the traffic stats. This time it's 68,000!!!!

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Josh and Alex talk with one of the pilots of the Google Project Wing (Delivery Drone) Prototype and learn more about it!

More details:
http://flitetest.com/articles/google-...

This comic strip follows the antics of an animal drone delivery startup in Silicon Valley.

The whole series can be seen at Droneco

It's customary and traditional that we celebrate the addition of every 1,000 new members here and share the traffic stats. This time it's 67,000!!!!

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Boca Competition

By Erika Pesantes Sun Sentinel

It wasn’t just fun and games as students flew whizzing drones in a gymnasium at Florida Atlantic University on Saturday. It was competition.

The statewide tournament was dubbed the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Challenge and pitted 18 middle and high schools from throughout South Florida against one another. The local teams, including host school Florida Atlantic High, were joined by a group that traveled from as far as Jacksonville, organizers said.

Drones are remote-controlled aircraft that hover in the air and also can be programmed to fly on their own with computer codes. They snap photos, read images and fly in a half-dozen directions. Ben Coleman, a 17-year-old FAU High student, helped organize the event that drew about 150 students

“This entire competition stemmed out of my nerdiness and the nerdiness of my friends, because we just started typing, playing around with code and we found that we were able to manipulate these drones to do things we wanted it to by writing programs,” he said. “So we decided to open that up to other schools to give them all the opportunity to do that.”

Full article here

By Brandon Griggs, CNN

"In the weeks ahead, we'll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift," said a post early Wednesday on Oculus VR's site. "Next week, we'll share more of the technical specifications here on the Oculus blog."

Of course, Oculus fans have heard promises like this before.

After debuting in 2012 as a blockbuster Kickstarter project, the device was initially expected to hit the market in 2014. In June 2014 CEO Brendan Iribe told Ars Technica, "If we haven't shipped by the end of 2015, that's a problem."

Now, 2016. Although developer versions of the headsets have been available for a while, some consumers have grown impatient with the delays.

"Just release the damned thing already," said one commenter, Paul Lopez, on Wednesday's Oculus blog post. "You guys have been dragging on this marketing hype for years and your competitors are getting to market well ahead of you."

Full article here Oculus Rift

It's customary and traditional that we celebrate the addition of every 1,000 new members here and share the traffic stats. This time it's 66,000!!!!

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The Aeryon Skyranger was one of many mulitrotor UAV platforms included in the FAA's recent round of exemptions for commercial UAS use. Photo: AERYON

From UAS Magazine

By Emily Aasand | April 09, 2015

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration granted a record-breaking 30 Section 333 unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) exemptions to a range of companies including AeroVironment Inc., SenseFly and The City of Roswell Coalition, in early April, bringing the total number of exempt companies to 99.

The recent addition totals nearly 30 percent of all FAA granted exemptions to date. The first FAA approved UAS exemption was granted in September 2014, and until April 3, the most exemptions granted in a single day was 11 on March 24.

Nearly 33 percent of the 30 recently exempt companies plan to use unmanned systems for film or aerial photography, and agriculture and aerial inspections together make up roughly 40 percent. Other company uses include mapping and surveying, and research, development and validation of a formal UAS training curriculum.

Unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs) that have been approved for exemption include both fixed wing aircraft and rotocopters and range from DJI Phantoms and PrecisionHawk’s Lancaster to the Aeryon SkyRanger and eBee UAS.

The rapid release of FAA approved exemptions comes nearly two weeks after the FAA unveiled a change to its regulatory exemption and authorization system that it believes will “bridge the gap between the past process, which evaluated every UAS operation individually,” with a new system designed for “future operations.”

Under the new policy, the FAA will grant a certificate of waiver or authorization for all flights at or below 200 feet to any UAS operator that has already received a Section 333 exemption. The COA allows the exempt UAS operator to fly anywhere in the U.S. without the need to acquire a COA for every flight—a major change from the previous approach.

The blanket COA, as the FAA refers to it, will be available for all fights that not only fly at or below 200 feet, but also weigh less than55 pounds, operate during daytime Visual Flight Rules conditions and within visual-line-of-sight of the pilots while staying at predetermined distances from airports or heliports. 

Article here FAA Drone Approvals

Scientists at the Green Brain Project have built a drone that navigates using a digital bee brain. (Credit: Green Brain Project)

From Discover

By Carl Engelking

Inside the Green Brain Project’s labs in the United Kingdom, drones buzz up and down the halls without the need for pilots. Instead they navigate using an “artificial bee brain” that’s been uploaded into their circuitry.

It’s all part of Green Brain’s long-term goal of building a robot that thinks, senses and acts like a honeybee. To do this, scientists mapped a bee brain and recreated with circuits the neural connections that fire on and off in an organic brain. When this “brain” software is uploaded into a drone, researchers have found the bot flies in some remarkably bee-like ways.

Build-a-Brain

Building a brain is not easy. The honeybee brain has more than 1,000,000 connected neurons that help it accomplish a host of cognitive behaviors. Late last year, a different team of scientists uploaded a digital worm brain into a wheeled LEGO robot, but that required them to map just 302 neurons.

So far, the Green Brain team has only recreated the part of a bee’s brain that allows it to see. Still the results were quite stunning. Using video cameras and it’s software, the aircraft flew down a corridor just like a bee trained to accomplish the same task. Currently, the virtual brains can only track motion and not colors or shapes.

Over time, Green Brain scientists want to digitally reconstruct a complete European honeybee brain and create the first robot that acts autonomously like a bee. But for now, they are focusing on recreating a bee’s visual and olfactory systems. 

Full article here Honeybee Brain

NASA-backed software could orchestrate urban skies

by Michael Belfiore

The commercial use of drones remains mostly illegal in the U.S. All the same, businesses are moving ahead with ways to profit from the small helicopters, with some assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration. In February the FAA, which is preparing drone rules, agreed to exempt State Farm from the prohibition, letting the insurer test the use of drones in claim inspections. On March 19 the agency granted Amazon.com a waiver to continue testing its package-delivery drones. And in Portland, Ore., startup SkyWard is pushing forward with a drone traffic control system that will allow thousands of the machines to fly through cities without colliding with one another or endangering people.

SkyWard is working with NASA and the world’s three largest drone makers—DJI in China, 3D Robotics in the U.S., and Parrot in France—to demonstrate that swarms of drones can safely coexist in crowded airspace. “It’s about applying the regulatory framework to a new kind of aviation infrastructure,” says co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Evans. The software project, Urban SkyWays, is designed to resemble a conventional air traffic control system at altitudes of 1,200 feet or lower, says Parimal Kopardekar, who manages NASA’s experiments on drone coordination and whose researchers are contributing their time to the project.

Urban SkyWays would load SkyWard’s cloud software onto each drone and the computer used by its pilot, says Marcos Osorno, SkyWard’s chief technology officer. The software plots the paths of all drones equipped with it, so a dispatcher working for a company such as Amazon or UPS could log on to the system to file a flight plan and receive an automatically generated route, from pickup point to destination, to help a drone avoid other machines. The flight plans will also take into account local and federal regulations. “The first question our system has to answer is, ‘Where is it safe to fly?’ ” Osorno says.

Full article here SkyWard