People are often amazed at how lightweight and strong our 3D printed Nylon plastic can be with the correct geometry.  It is an important part of the design process to test your 3D printed designs to breaking point.  Prototyping a product before releasing it for sale to others in your Shapeways shop is essential to ensure that your design will stand up to the stresses of use, and not make your customers find out for you.

"People keep asking me, how strong is that printed chassis. My answer usualy was.."uuhhmm pretty strong I think"

Following is a video by Martin of Magic's Models on his VRCP channel on YouTube that tests hisWild Willy chassis for losi mrc remote control car 3D printed in Nylon by Shapeways.

The lagging federal effort to fully integrate drones into U.S. airspace is in danger of falling even further behind schedule.

A funding bill now before the Senate essentially would stop the process in its tracks by prohibiting the Federal Aviation Administration from moving forward until it completes a detailed report on drones’ potential privacy impact.

The report, called for in the Senate’s fiscal 2014 transportation appropriations measure, would be yet another hurdle in the FAA’s already complex, time-consuming drone integration initiative.

The agency has been charged by Congress to write rules and regulations allowing drones — now used primarily by the military, law enforcement and researchers — to operate commercially in U.S. skies by September 2015, but the industry fears that deadline is likely to be missed.

Requiring the FAA, which traditionally deals only with airspace safety and has little experience in writing Fourth Amendment protections, to craft a comprehensive privacy report would all but guarantee the date will be pushed back.

Leaders in the unmanned aerial systems sector warn that such setbacks will hamper American technological innovation and carry economic consequences.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/28/funding-schemes-in-congress-could-ground-drones/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS#ixzz2aQcXgU5Q

Drones aren’t just for the CIA anymore. While Predators and Reapers still patrol the skies of the Middle East and South Asia, automated flight technology has burst into the consumer realm in a big way. Brands, scientists, government services and regular people are taking advantage of cheap and easy to control compact flight systems with decent lift capacity for cargo or equipment. Even former editor of Wired magazine Chris Anderson foresaw the drone trend and left Wired to become CEO of 3D Robotics, a DIY drone-building company. Soon enough drones may be ubiquitous, zipping around the skies on errands, surveillance tasks or even as artistic tools.

Imagine you’re in a field at a summer festival, far from the long lines for food or drinks. You thirst for a beer, or hunger for a burrito, but are unwilling or unable to stand in line for hours. What do you do?

Drones to the rescue! Flying delivery robots have been increasingly experimented with by DIY drone enthusiasts and major brands looking to revolutionize small parcel delivery. Via an app that taps into the user’s GPS location, drone systems can zero in on a particular location and deploy cargo by parachute or manual extraction while hovering. Some developers use straight-flying robots, like theBurrito Bomber that releases a burrito in a parachute-controlled parabola. Others, such as the beer-delivering drone of South Africa, hover high over the target and parachute the cargo directly down. As parachutes are not very accurate these would only really work outside with lots of open space and cooperative crowds.

Enter the big brand. Perhaps the most efficient drone delivery system, and the one most likely to see implementation in cramped urban environments, is manual extraction from a hovering platform shown in the DomiCopter video above. While currently only capable of short trips, the pizza magnate is seriously testing drone delivery and it’s rumored that a Domino’s Flight Academy might be in the works. With longer range drones, a central warehouse could quickly serve a large urban area without being hindered by traffic – and this doesn’t apply to just pizza. Any small parcel could be drone delivered in a city, if the recipients were willing to go up to a roof or down to the sidewalk to receive it. But this would require major legislative approval in addition to improved drone safety, automation and carrying capacity so in the meanwhile some restaurants are serving burgers with hovering delivery trays.

There are so many applications for drones, from simple surveillance to search and rescue, wildlife monitoring and geological 3D mapping. Some very creative uses are popping up in the art world, with arrays of synchronized drones programmed to move together in very precise formations. One of the most stunning examples was the ‘Meet Your Creator’ troupe of 16 quadrotors that danced and manipulated sound and light at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase 2012.

Created by Marshmallow Laser Feast, the show used quadrotor drones with mounted LEDs and motorized mirrors that reflected and diverted light to create floating light sculptures. Check out the behind the scenes on this and some of their other work here.

While the next step may be to bring such exhibitions outside (imagine performances on the the scale of fireworks shows), there is a big legal gray area around the commercial and personal use of drones in public. As more and more people get their hands on this technology and put cameras on them, a serious debate has arisen between protecting freedom of speech and the right to privacy. Some call for less regulation, but that hasn’t prevented a few states from banning drone photography. What this means for the budding industry and its artistic side remains to be seen, but there will be surely some degree of flexibility since many drone activities (like drone paintball) require a mounted camera.

To find out more about drones and see how nature photographers are utilizing the new technology,read the rest here at iQ by Intel.

As the united band of robots hovers and climbs off the ground, each robot module is using inertial sensors to detect tilt and roll.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated an amazing capability for small robots to self-assemble and take to the air as a multi-rotor helicopter. Maximilian Kriegleder and Raymond Oung worked with Professor Raffaello D’Andrea at his research lab to develop the small hexagonal pods that assemble into flying rafts. The true accomplishment of this research is that there is not one robot in control – each unit in itself decides what actions to take to keep the group in the air in what's known as Distributed Flight Array.

How It Works

The sequence starts with an arbitrary group of robots on the ground. Each robot has three omnidirectional wheels that allow it to rotate and drive in any direction. The robots are programmed to seek a common spot, for example, a brightly lit area. As the robots approach one another, one robot spins in a circle while the other drives around it in a pirouette. Interlocking tabs on the outside of the robots make a physical connection, while infrared light beams carry data between the modules.

Once all the modules in the area are connected, there is a brief calibration of sensors while nothing is moving, and then the entire group start their propellers in unison and take to the sky. Half the modules need to have clockwise propeller rotation, while the other half rotate counterclockwise, in order to cancel out torque.

As the united band of robots hovers and climbs off the ground, each robot module is using inertial sensors to detect tilt and roll – exactly the same sensors found in an iPhone or iPad to detect tilt. Each of the modules determines how to correct for pitch (forward and back tilting) and roll (side to side tilting) by making small adjustments to the speed of its propeller. The data link on the infrared light beams helps the robots decide which direction and axis is which.

Once the raft of flying robots reaches a pre-determined altitude, as measured by another sensor, they break apart and each tumble to the ground. The individual units are not capable of independent flight due to torque from their single propeller. Once back on the ground, the whole dance starts again, with the robots again deciding on a center, forming a group, and assembling into a random shape.

The real heart of this work as a research project is solving the controls problem of flying an arbitrary shape of propeller units. It’s not just a standard shape like a ring or a cross that can fly, but any shape made of up any number of units.

This is the second type of flying robot unit that the group has created. The first model used magnets to hold the units together, and small electrical pins to allow communications. This second model has a more robust mechanical petal leaf latch between the robots and uses non-contact IR light beams for communications. Both robots had bodies created on 3D printers that build up plastic designs directly from CAD drawings.

Distributed control

Professor D’Andrea has several similar groundbreaking projects on his very impressive resume. He is one of the founders of Kiva Robotics, the distributed mobile robots that help make Amazon.com warehouses efficient. A whole fleet of small robots go out into the warehouse and find product on shelves and bring it, shelf and all, to pickers – humans – who place items into boxes. The robots then take the shelves back to the warehouse. For efficiency, the most picked items are placed closest to the packers, making the warehouse self-organized for speed.

A similar distributed control problem the group solved was a beautiful self-balancing cube. Each segment of this cube structure had its own independent control of its center of gravity, and the group could also be assembled in arbitrary shapes that would then balance themselves on a point.

Another fascinating construction is the Blind Juggler, a self-regulating, self-correcting mechanism that bounces a ball on a paddle – without any sensors or feedback at all. By careful design of the mechanics, the Blind Juggler automatically corrects the path of the ball to reduce error and keep the ball in the air. It’s an elegant solution to the problem without using any computers or robotics at all.

Nature has provided a blueprint for this area of research by way of the colony instincts that drive ants and bees to form such integrated and productive groups, with no central leader and no command authority. Each worker bee or soldier ant has its own programming, provided by nature and evolution, and each manages to do small tasks that contribute to the group as a whole building structures, finding food, and repairing damage done by storms and predators.

Applying this biologically-inspired solution to swarms of robots could enable a wide range of applications. Swarms of robots could be used to explore other planets, or search a large area for a missing person. When a larger payload needs to be lifted, groups of robots would combine to make a larger flying platform and when that job was done, disperse into smaller groups that can cover a larger area. The advantage of distributed control in these scenarios is that there is no vulnerable central control unit which, if taken out, could bring down the entire mission.

Watch the self-assembling robots take flight in the following video.

Source: ETH Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control via Wired Magazine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fcradVE9uts

July 12, 2013 By Brian Benchoff

Imagine a quadcopter hovering above a payload – a can of beans, perhaps. The ‘copter descends onto the payload, activates an electromagnet, and flies away with a hobo’s dinner. Right now, this is a bit of an impossibility. A normal electromagnet that powerful would consume an amazing amount of power, something quads don’t usually have in abundance. With the OpenGrab project, the dream of a remote-controlled skycrane is within reach, thanks to some very clever applications of magnetics.

The tech behind the OpenGrab is an electro-permanent magnet, basically an electromagnet you can turn on and off, but doesn’t require any power to stay on. OpenGrab was heavily influenced by a PhD thesis aimed at using these devices for self-assembling buildings.

This project had a very successful Kickstarter campaign and has seen some great progress in the project. While beer doesn’t come in steel cans anymore, we can imagine a whole lot of really cool applications for this tech from infuriating electronic puzzles to some very cool remote sensing applications. 
Filed under: hardware

It's customary and a tradition that we celebrate every new 1,000 members here and share the traffic stats. This time it's 41,000!!!!

There were 1.5 million page views in the last month! (we get around 50,000 pageviews a day on average). It took us just 23 days to get this latest 1,000 members--we're averaging one new member every 33 minutes.

Thanks as always to all the community members who make this growth possible, and especially the moderators who approve blog posts and otherwise answer questions and keep things ticking here.

Regards,

TCIII Admin

By Matthew Gryczan

Pity the poor drone. It suffers from the image problem as an ominous bird of prey looming overhead in spy operations or as a dealer in deadly force, the subject of congressional filibusters and news reports about terrorist raids.

But in reality, drones are being flown every day in Michigan and other states by colleges and universities, public safety agencies and entrepreneurs for much more benevolent purposes, such as covering the 2013 Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix, assessing the recent flooding of the Grand River and creating a spectacular promotional video of the De Zwaan windmill in Holland.

It’s inevitable that the use of drones in aerial photography will take off in Michigan in the near future because it provides customized aerial shots for as little as $100 — a fraction of the cost of photos taken by businesses that rely on manned helicopters and airplanes.

As they continue to become easier to fly and drop in price, drones are expected to be embraced by anyone who wants an eye in the sky — farmers who want to know where crops need water or fertilizer, companies that want to inspect equipment in hard-to-reach places and videographers who want to get stunning shots of subjects on the cheap.

“Think about how tall a cell tower is,” said Chris Bergen, owner of Bergen R/C Helicopters in Cassopolis, which builds manually controlled craft and drones — also euphemistically called “unmanned aerial vehicles.” “I’ll be damned if you would get me to climb that frickin’ tower to inspect it. I’ll fly my multicopter up there to take pictures or video of it instead.”

For instance, Michigan Technological University in Houghton uses several of Bergen’s “birds” on behalf of the Michigan Department of Transportation to assess which dirt roads in the state are rife with potholes and ruts, then calculate how much fill would be needed to smooth them over.

“I laugh at the nightly news when they talk about these drones,” Bergen said, “because none of this is new.” 

In a holding pattern

Bergen’s business and others, such as EAI LLC in Grand Rapids and Northwestern Michigan Collegein Traverse City, are eagerly waiting for the floodgates to open for the commercial use of drones. At this point, the potentially high-flying industry is grounded by the reluctance of the Federal Aviation Administration to permit the commercial use of drones until the agency can issue regulations on their operation.

Les Door, an FAA spokesman, said his agency expects to propose regulations on the operation of small unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, by the end of this year. But he cautioned that those regulations also need to go through a public comment period and further consideration before potential implementation.

Until then, permitted drone use is limited to experimentation by universities and public entities. As of February, the FAA had issued 327 certificates of authorization or waiver allowing noncommercial drone flights nationally. Under-the-radar businesses that use drones to shoot video or photos for customers and take compensation are unaware of or ignoring the FAA prohibition or think it doesn’t apply to their situation.

As one such business, EAI has taken video of homes, businesses and events around Grand Rapids; Holland; Hudsonville; the Grand Prix races at Belle Isle; Walloon Lake; Elk Rapids; Atlanta, Mich.; and locations in North Carolina and Florida. The company, started last year by Tommy Knight and Eric Snyder, posted a demo video on YouTube in February that has stunning shots of what is possible using the technology.

Knight said the CineStar8 multirotor helicopter that they built from a kit can carry an 8-pound payload for more than 10 minutes — more than enough lifting power to carry a high-definition video camera. The company that makes a line of CineStar8 heavy-lifting multirotor drones advertises that a basic kit costs about $3,600 for one that’s 3 feet in diameter.

But the advent of drones such as the CineStar8 have become a Pandora’s box for aviation, largely because a growing number of entrepreneurs are now finding compelling business reasons to invest in radio-controlled aircraft that before had been the purview of a small group of hobbyists.

And while a UAV may be small, it still can pose a significant hazard for aircraft if flown recklessly, Door said.

Parrot SA reported last year that it had sold more than 300,000 multirotor helicopters called AR.Drones with imaging technology that can be controlled with a smartphone and can send images directly to an electronic tablet.

A report issued in March by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimated that the commercial use of drones would create more than 70,000 jobs in the United States and a total economic impact of $13.6 billion by 2018 if they are integrated into the national airspace by the 2015 deadline for regulations imposed by Congress on the FAA. Michigan would see an estimated $94 million of impact during this period, according to the Arlington, Va.-based trade group, which represents about 600 corporations and 7,000 individuals involved in the manufacture and operation of ground, sea and air drones.

No special skills necessary

Bergen has had a ringside seat in the transition of the radio-controlled aircraft market during the past 20 years from a small cadre of people who spent months learning how to fly radio-controlled helicopters for industrial and military applications to entrepreneurs looking to make money with much easier-to-fly equipment. His company employs four full-time people in the manufacture of UAVs that can range from a small electric octocopter with eight rotors equally spaced in a 3-foot diameter to a turbine-powered helicopter with a wingspan diameter of 7 feet.

Bergen’s father, Larry, started the company in the 1980s as a machine shop that eventually made parts for radio-controlled helicopters. Bergen joined the business after he received an honorable discharge in 1991 after eight years of service in the U.S. Army as a flight engineer for Chinook helicopters. He bought the assets of the business in 1999.

“At that time, a lot of colleges and universities were developing auto-pilot systems for helicopters,” Bergen said. “They needed a test bed to work out their programming and algorithms, sensors and electronic components, and they needed aircraft that could carry the weight of all these components. Our products fit the bill.”

While he still makes the Turbine Observer radio-controlled helicopter, which can stay aloft for 30 minutes with a 10-pound camera on its nose, the real growth area is smaller, multirotor craft that have auto-pilot features and don’t require nearly the same amount of skill to fly.

The degree of onboard automation helps distinguish a drone from radio-controlled craft that can only be manually controlled.

“We try not to use the ‘D’ word around here because it has a negative connotation across the general public right now,” said Tony Sauerbrey, manager of the unmanned aerial systems program at Northwestern Michigan College. “They typically think it’s a mindless flying robot that you turn on and it goes off and flies its mission without human involvement.”

Sauerbrey said UAV pilots at the college can set altitudes and program a flight plan with point-and-click software, but they still supervise the flight operations and have the ability to take over manually if the occasion arises.

Everyone expects the drone market to rise exponentially with the recent advances in automation.

“We gave a (radio-controlled helicopter) demonstration to the Georgia State Patrol six or seven years ago, and they initially wanted these craft in every one of their barracks across the state,” Bergen said. “But it didn’t happen when they saw how much time it takes to learn to fly. It can be a year or more of learning how to fly (radio-controlled) helicopters, making it cost-prohibitive.

“But now with these new multirotors, we are getting law enforcement to take a second look at it because I can teach someone to fly a multirotor literally in minutes.”

Under the radar

Technically, anyone who flies drone missions for money is doing so without the permission of the FAA, which is charged with maintaining the safety of the nation’s airspace. The federal agency permits hobbyists to fly model aircraft under 400 feet of altitude and away from airports and populated areas. When it discovers commercial drone operations, it issues cease-and-desist letters and warnings about potential $10,000 fines per flight.

But it is clear that the FAA doesn’t have the resources to tightly enforce the prohibition when the technology is already in the hands of so many people and has been used for years with radio-controlled aircraft. One Indianapolis television station reported that the FAA has launched 23 investigations of unauthorized drone flights during the past two years, resulting in warning letters to 10 operators nationwide. Complaints of unauthorized drone use are on the rise.

Initially, the owners of EAI were interested in talking with Crain’s about commercial applications for their drone, but they declined further comment after they visited Sauerbrey and issued a statement that they only operated their craft in short ranges where they can be seen. EAI stated that it had several restrictions on taking images of subjects, such as a distance of more than five miles from a G-class airfield, wind under 15 mph, altitudes under 200 feet and clear and open airspaces.

Bergen and Sauerbrey said the FAA is working diligently to come up with regulations, but the agency has been somewhat stymied by the considerable variation in drone styles, which can range from a Boeing 737 to a model airplane.

Northwestern Michigan College offers several classes on UAV uses and operation under its current FAA certification, with the anticipation that it will be well-situated to provide training to get a UAV pilot’s license when requirements are defined.

“We are a little bit ahead of our time, so to speak, with anticipating the market,” Sauerbrey said of his program, an outgrowth of NMC’s manned aircraft training, offered for the past 40 years. “But we think this is going to be a very large part of aviation going forward.”

While the threat of a $10,000 fine can have a chilling effect on setting up a large-scale commercial drone enterprise, the sheer ratio of potential violators to FAA inspectors makes enforcement difficult, Bergen said.

“When I worked for Delta Airlines down in Atlanta, Georgia, I used to see FAA inspectors quite often,” Bergen said. “I don’t know about you, but around here I haven’t seen too many FAA inspectors.”

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20130707/NEWS/307079980/drone-industry-set-to-soar-when-faa-gives-nod

For those of you who need to make repairs on the road, this might be the answer:

July 1, 2013 By Mike Szczys

Take the machine shop with you; that’s the mantra which drove [Ryan] to build this CNC mill in a briefcase. That album will give you a taste of the final product. But you’ll want to dig through two pages of his forum thread starting with this post in order to behold the build process.

The image above is only part way through the fabrication, but we thought it gave the best overall view of his work. It’s missing the cables which connect to the control circuitry in the lid. The bed has also not been installed and this was before he fabricated the protective case for the PCBs.

Getting everything to fit inside of a folding case was quite a trick. Of course he used CAD to make sure it was possible. There are several places where the clearance when closed is about 2mm. We’re shocked by the build quality of the mill itself. It’s a novel idea to make it portable, but the accuracy and reliability of the machine didn’t suffer for the concept.

If you need a desktop mill that’s not quite as portable here’s a project which will dish out some inspiration.

By Pete Pachal

The coming Windows 8.1 update, due in the fall, will bring include better support for 3D printers, Microsoft announced Wednesday.

Microsoft vice president Antoine Leblond showed off the new ability at the company's Build 2013 keynote. With a MakerBot 3D printer hooked up to a Windows 8 PC, Leblond showed that printing objects was as easy as selecting the Devices icon from the Windows 8 Charms menu, then the printer.

In Windows 8.1, developers will be able to build 3D printer support into their apps through the new API. For users, that means fewer pieces of software to install, and over time, more apps that will work with 3D printers.

Leblond showed printing an object from a generic 3D rendering app. He also pointed out two printers that were supported, the MakerBot Replicator 2, coming soon to Microsoft Stores, and the 3D systems Cube, which retails for less than $1,300 at Staples, he said.

Will Microsoft's move lead to more platforms supporting 3D printing? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

Mark Engebretson

Owners of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, based in Oklahoma City, were at Possum Kingdom Lake Saturday demonstrating unmanned aircraft that can be used over wildfires. Held at the Possum Kingdom East Volunteer Fire Department, representatives from the Brazos River Authority, Graham Fire Department, Palo Pinto County Sheriff’s Office and Caddo VFD attended. Greg Ward, who has extensive experience with Channel 9 in Oklahoma City with video and audio reporting from aircraft, explained some of the capabilities.

“The flexibility is endless, you can configure it a number of ways,” he said. The 4.4-pound aircraft can be equipped with forward looking video with a variety of possible lenses, infrared and thermal imaging among the options. He also said there are a number of options for flying the aircraft, from line of sight, to first person with a computer monitor, much like a video game to programming it to specific coordinates. “Flight time is generally two hours,” Ward added. “We’re putting auto pilots in all of these. It can return to the GPS location where it was launched, circles and waits to land.”

Jerry Stuckey, the company’s CEO, said the aircraft is made on composite Styrofoam. “If something happens, if it runs into the roof of a house it won’t hurt the house.” He added that should something happen to damage the aircraft, the package contains spare parts. They also explained that a video signal is sent to a receiver connected to a computer. The signal includes the aircraft elevation, GPS coordinates and flight speed.

All this data can be recorded on a SDHC card that can be played on a computer. In addition, multiple receivers can be used including in fire trucks, mounted on the dash to give firefighters real time views of the fires and where potential problems – or dangers – exist. Stuckey said the aircraft has line of sight navigation or can be programmed to specific coordinates. If it loses the signal, it is programmed to return. Once a signal is obtained, the operator can once again control the aircraft.

“We will train you,” said Stuckey. “A simulator comes with the package,” Ward added. The other plus for the system is the ability to search for missing people. “A 2-year-old walks away from camp, an aircraft with thermal images can find him,” said Stuckey.

“Your imagination is the only thing that limits what you can do,” Stuckey continued.

The company offers a number of options which can be mounted on the unmanned aircraft. Stuckey said that list would be forwarded to PK East VFD for review. Once options are selected, a price would be provided. “This is new, this industry is not very old,” Stuckey added.

Ronnie Ranft, PK East VFD said he believes the system would be very beneficial. “We already know the value of having air resources from Texas Forest Service for locations of fires, potential dangers and where a fire is headed,” he said. “In having an unmanned aircraft, it would greatly enhance our ability to contain a wildfire by aiding in our evaluation of a fire.”

http://www.lakecountrysun.com/news/ci_23450447/uas-demonstrates-potential-unmanned-aircraft-wildfire-use.html

After months of promises, the Raspberry Pi camera is finally heading out to hackers and makers across the world. Of course the first build with the Pi cam to grace the pages of Hackaday would be removing the IR filter, and it just so happens [Gary] and his crew at the Reading hackerspace are the first to do just that.

As [Gary] shows in his video, the process of removing the Pi cam’s IR filter is extremely fiddly.  Getting the filter out of the camera involves removing the sensor, gently cutting it open with a scalpel, and finally gluing the whole thing back together with a tiny bit of superglue. Not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for anyone without a halfway decent bench microscope.

If you’re looking for a Raspberry Pi-powered security camera, game camera, or something for an astronomy application, this is the way to make it happen. You might want to be careful when removing the IR filter; [Gary] broke one camera on their first attempt. They got it to work, though, and the picture quality looks pretty good, as seen in the videos below.

Robot Magazine July/August 2013

Arxterra envisions Telerobotic Parks that can be explored from your living room, using your browser and the computing power that already exists in modern smartphones. High bandwidth wireless internet and rugged rovers "will intrigue and challenge makers, robot enthusiasts, and adventurers,"Arxterra predicts. The Arxterra Pathfinder Mission plans a launch in southern California just south of Quail Lake, where robots will join the rich fauna that includes badgers, racoon, prong horn antelope, black bears, bob cats and many more among the diverse wildlife. Shown is the rover prototype. Learn more at  http://www.arxterra.com/

These high-tech models help the geologists to criss-cross the landscape, not unlike what you will find on Google Earth. This virtual fieldwork enables the researchers to gather information on anything from the type of rock to the thickness of the sedimentation; all with the help of a few mouse clicks on the computer.

– A landscape’s surface often reflects what lies beneath ground and corresponds with the rocks below the seabed. When we have an overview of the rocks and minerals in one area, it is far easier to make estimates about where to find oil and how the oil flows, says Simon Buckley, senior researcher at CIPR and head of the VOG group.

Quick and affordable

So far, the researchers have used ground-based laser scanners (LIDAR), infrared sensors and cameras to replicate the landscape. But putting instruments on the ground is both time-consuming and limited to lower ground areas.

In higher elevations in the shadows of sensors, for instance behind rocks or high mountains, the researchers have had to mount the cameras and laser sensors to helicopters, which they have leased.

– Using drones is more affordable. All places can be reached quickly and you can shoot in inaccessible areas, Buckley explains.

Pictures shot with the help of a drone complement the images from low-level terrain that the researchers already have in hand. The end result is more precise and complete 3D models.

– The aim is to bring all models together to get the best possible geological map of an area, says Buckley.

The use of drones in the search for oil is similar to techniques used in Switzerland and Germany to look for minerals. The models created by the CIPR researchers can also be used for research on CO2 storage.

– It isn’t hard to collect a point cloud of laser readings and present these. The challenge is to use the data for geological analysis, Buckley points out.

A helicopter in the office

The drone is operated from the ground just like a radio-controlled plane, shooting images of the earth’s surface from the air. The pilot on the ground also operates the camera.

There are plenty of restrictions in place, though, and not anyone can fly a drone. Norwegian aviation authorities put strict regulations on anyone wanting to use drones for research. Aleksandra Sima has been practising in a flight simulator and has tested mini helicopters in her office.

– The worst thing that can happen is that a drone crashes and hurts people, says Sima before reassuringly adding. – But we won’t be flying drones in populated areas.

(Translation: Sverre Ole Drønen.)

http://www.uib.no/news/nyheter/2013/05/the-drones-of-oil

By Gary Mortimer

The Fuji Mountain in Japan, the Dutch Windmills in Holland, Stonehenge in England, the African Savannah, the Niagara Falls, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Yellowstone National Park in the United States, The Grand Canyon, the Cristo Redentor in Rio DE Janeiro, Brazil, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Hoover Dam in the United States…

DJI is hosting an aerial videography competition, aiming at collecting amazing aerial videos which are filmed in the open air with wonderful shots or footage using the professional DJI Spreading Wings S800+WooKong-M+Zenmuse Z15. The videos are expected to help people to see the world from a special perspective and to demonstrate the unique features of the selected filming site. We are not looking for videos of built-up areas or crowed places, i.e. please film responsibly and safely.

By Clay Dillow, contributor

FORTUNE -- Last month the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the unmanned systems industry's largest trade organization, released its first economic study detailing just how an expected $82 billion in economic impacts resulting from the integration of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the national airspace will be spread across the 50 states. But perhaps "detailing" is the wrong word. While the report is arguably the most thorough examination of the burgeoning drone industry's potential economic impacts to date, even the report's own author admits the UAS industry remains so nascent that the data necessary to make comprehensive projections simply doesn't yet exist.

"Assuming the FAA does come up with a set of rules in the next two or three years and we get this thing rolling, here are the things that I'm pretty sure of," says Darryl Jenkins, a 30-year veteran of the aerospace industry who now serves as an airline analyst as well as the co-author of AUVSI's UAS economic impact report. "We'll probably start off with exponential growth over a three- to six-year period. After that the growth rate will level off--it will continue to grow at a faster rate than the economy in general, but it will be slower than it was in the initial years. Those are the things that I'm real sure of. After that a lot of uncertainty comes into the picture."

Indeed, uncertainties abound in the UAS space. Under a Congressional mandate handed down last year, the Federal Aviation Administration is required to integrate small UAS for civilian and commercial applications into the national airspace by end of Q3 2015, essentially opening up American skies to swarms of unmanned systems. (The FAA has projected that 30,000 UAS will be flying by 2020--although what data it used to come up with such a number remains unclear.) But there's no guarantee the FAA will meet that deadline, or what additional restrictions might be placed upon civilian and commercial UAS when they are finally integrated into civilian skies.

MORE: 9 states poised to dominate the drone economy

Then there's the staggering lack of end user data. In the history of aviation there's never been anything like UAS, and until civilian and commercial UAS are allowed to fly it's impossible to know just exactly how--or by whom--they will be employed. And without data on UAS usage and applications--or even how they will be regulated--it's difficult to project how and where the future of the UAS industry will take shape.

Difficult, but not impossible. While hard, numeric data may be scarce, various intangibles and other useful indicators--existing aerospace industry infrastructure, education and workforce training in UAS engineering and operation, existing government and military research facilities, state-by-state policies and legislative attitudes toward UAS--paint a fairly clear picture (if not comprehensive) picture of how the UAS industry can be expected to shape up over the next several years.

There are still plenty of variables that could shake up the UAS landscape, not least of which is the FAA, which will certify six federally-sanctioned UAS test sites across the nation sometime before the end of the year (each test site is expected to draw significant R&D investment to its host state, and there are currently 37 states competing for those six certifications). But by recognizing those variables and factoring in the many intangibles as well as the hard data that is increasingly available, it's possible to begin visualizing where the drone economy lives now, and where it's likely going to live in the future.

Here is a closer look at how drones will affect the U.S. economy.

By Evan Ackerman

Conventional quadrotors are what’s called underactuated robots, which means that they can move in more ways than they have independent control over. For example, they can happily yaw around to any angle you want while otherwise stationary, but if you ask them to pitch or roll, they can’t do it without also changing their position: if you try to roll a quadrotor left, the whole robot is going to fly left, and if you try to fly a quadrotor left, the whole robot is going to roll left.

Having controls coupled together like this places some restrictions on what you can do with quadrotors, but a new design presented yesterday at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) gets around all of that with propellers that tilt.

This level of control turns the quadrotor into a fully-actuated robot: you have complete control over its position and orientation, and as the video shows, this lets the quadrotor do things that would otherwise be impossible for a conventional quadrotor without those tilting propellers.

There are tons of ways in which this new capability can be useful, but I’d say the most obvious one is for any quadrotor that carries a camera (which is pretty much all of them nowadays): instead of having to either rely on a static camera or invest in a complicated, heavy, and expensive gimbaled mount, you can now use the entire quadrotor as a pan and tilt camera platform.

Future work will improve the capabilities of this prototype (it’s called the “omnicopter”), and the researchers also plan to start experimenting with environmental interaction tasks that require orientation control, like using tools.

"First Flight Tests for a Quadrotor UAV with Tilting Propellers," by Markus Ryll, Heinrich H. Bulthoff, and Paolo Robuffo Giordano from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, was presented this week at ICRA 2013 in Germany.

By Gary Mortimer

The EU continues to look forward and rapidly advance UA civilian integration, are you watching FAA?? A completely different narrative to what is currently happening in the New World (well the bit between Canada and Mexico)

View the ebook here http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/flipbook/rpas/?goback=%2Egde_941207_member_238344699#/1/

The development of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) has opened a promising new chapter in the history of aerospace. Military exploitation of UAS has grown significantly in the recent years. However this trend has so far not been followed by the civil sector.

RPAS can offer a wide range of civil applications for the benefit of European citizens and businesses. Being remotely piloted, RPA can perform tasks that manned systems cannot perform, either for safety or for economic reasons.

RPAS are well suited for long duration monitoring tasks or risky flights into ash clouds. They can efficiently complement existing manned aircraft or satellites infrastructure used by governments in crisis management, border control or fire fighting. RPAS can also deliver profitable commercial aerial services in various areas, such as in precision agriculture and fisheries, power or gas line monitoring, infrastructure inspection, communications and broadcast services, wireless communication relay and satellite augmentation systems, natural resources monitoring, media and entertainment, digital mapping, land and wildlife management, air quality control and management.

A broad consultation on the future of civil RPAS applications in Europe

In order to examine the economic impact of this emerging technology and identify the obstacles to the development of civil RPAS applications, the European Commission conducted a broad stakeholders’ consultation. Between 2009 and 2012, three major initiatives have been launched, allowing an extensive exchange of views with the RPAS Community.

In 2009, DG Mobility and Transport conducted a Hearing on Light Unmanned Aircrafts, while in 2010 it organized together with the European Defense Agency a High-Level conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems . The hearing report [785 KB] and the conclusions of the High Level conference [17 KB] confirmed the enormous potential of RPAS technology and the necessity for action in EU level.

Taking action in defining the way forward, DG Enterprise and DG Mobility and Transport conducted, from June 2011 to February 2012, an extensive consultation on the future of RPAS through 5 workshops, titled the UAS Panel Process (see all presentations and written contributions).

The Staff Working Document “Towards a European strategy for the development of civil applications of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) ” (SWD(2012)259) published in September 2012, reports the outcomes of this consultation. Main conclusions were:

• RPAS present an important potential for the development of innovative civil applications (commercial, corporate and governmental) in a wide variety of sectors to the benefit of European society by creating jobs and achieving useful tasks.
• To unleash this potential the first priority is to achieve a safe integration of RPAS into the European air system as soon as possible.
• This requires the development of appropriate technologies and the implementation of the necessary aviation regulation at EU and national levels. Issues like privacy and data protection or insurance must also be addressed.
• It also requires an increased coordination between all relevant actors (EASA, national Civil Aviation Authorities, EURCAE, Eurocontrol, JARUS, industry etc.) and between regulatory and technological developments.

Given the urgency to achieve RPAS safe integration into the civil airspace in view of the potential economic and social benefits of such applications, the UAS Panel called upon the European Commission to take the lead in the development of a Roadmap for safe RPAS integration into European Air System (RPAS Roadmap).

A Roadmap for the safe integration of RPAS into civil airspace

Following this call, DG Enterprise and DG Mobility and Transport steered the preparation and the implementation of the proposed Roadmap.

The RPAS Roadmap will provide a strategy for achieving RPAS integration into the European air system from 2016. It will identify the actions needed to ensure the development by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) of the regulation necessary for large RPA (> 150kg) and support the development of harmonized regulation for light RPA (< 150 kg) by national Civil Aviation Authorities. It will provide a research agenda defining the required technology developments and propose measures to address the societal impact of RPAS (privacy/data protection, insurance etc.). The Roadmap will include a rolling plan that will span over 15 years.

DG Enterprise and DG Transport are currently preparing the RPAS Roadmap with the support of 3 temporary Working Groups gathering the necessary expertise around the 3 main areas covered by the Roadmap: aviation regulation, technology and societal impact.

In order to support the implementation of the Roadmap, the European Commission has set-up a European RPAS Steering Group (ERSG) gathering the organizations contributing to achieve the tasks defined in the Roadmap. The Group will endorse the Roadmap, report the progress achieved on a yearly basis and update the Roadmap when necessary. The following bodies are currently members of the Steering Group: EC, EASA, EUROCONTROL, ECAC, EUROCAE, SESAR JU, JARUS, EDA, ESA, ASD and UVSI. The composition of the Group may evolve according to the needs.

The European Commission intends to submit the first issue of the Roadmap to the European RPAS Steering Group for endorsement in spring 2013.

UAS Database

In order to facilitate the gathering and the consolidation of existing information and increase the transparency of on-going activities, DG Enterprise and Industry has set-up a public database on UAS accessible through theCIRCABC interest group on UAS (To access the documents uploaded to this group, please click on “Library” on the left-hand menu. No login or registration is required). Stakeholders are invited to contribute building-up the database. Any relevant public information can be sent to entr-uas@ec.europa.eu.

For further questions, please contact: entr-uas@ec.europa.eu.

By Gary Mortimer

OppiKoppi beer drone technology v1.1: This is the sort of ordnance drones should really deliver all over the world.
More updates to follow, but you will be able to order beers from your phone to the District 9 campsite in 2013.
At the moment it is hand guided, but it will eventually fly on a gps grid. We will send word.

Music by The Black Cat Bones: Ol’ Pappa Joe

Concept by Oppikoppi/Hilltop Live – info@Hilltoplive.co.za

Besides the issues of dropping nothing without approval from an aircraft other than water or finely divided sand and the flight over crowds… The folks at Darkwing Aerials have created a video that’s going viral. The folks at Oppikoppi must be very happy with the press they are getting.

By James Holloway

NASA's autonomous, solar-powered explorer GROVER has been kitted out with ground-penetrating radar to take to Greenland's ice sheet on Friday. There the robot will spend a month analyzing the accumulation of snow and how this contributes to the ice sheet over time. The scientists involved hope to identify a new layer of ice that has formed since summer 2012, an unusually warm summer which saw melting across 97 percent of the area of the ice sheet. During that time, an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan calved from the Petermann Glacier, part of the ice sheet.

NASA hopes it can offset its ice accumulation data against summer melt to gauge net loss.

Though ice sheet may sound modest next to the word glacier, it is actually reserved for only the largest contiguous chunks of ice. While any sheet more than 50,000 sq km (19,000 sq miles) qualifies, the only two sheets existent today surpass that threshold by a country mile. Greenland's ice sheet covers 1.7 million sq km of the country's land area (almost all of it in other words). The Antarctic ice sheet is much larger again, covering 14 million sq km.

GROVER stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research. The explorer came about as a result of two summer engineering bootcamps held at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 2010 and 2011. Students pitched the idea of a solar-powered rover to Goddard glaciologist Lora Koenig, who became an adviser to the GROVER project. Equipping GROVER with radar was Koenig's idea; an alternative to using manned snow-going vehicles or aircraft which are more expensive to operate.

With solar panels attached, GROVER stands 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, and weighs in at 800 pounds (360 kg). Though the steep angle the PV panels are mounted at would compromise efficiency in most environments, on the snowy ice sheet, the high reflectance of the ground means this is much less of an issue. Because energy is at a premium, a low-power radar system has been used, and GROVER will trundle along at an average of 2 km/h (1.2 mph). Despite this modest speed (actually, not so bad given its working environment), it's thought that GROVER will be capable of gathering more data than a besnowmobiled human, thanks to the sun shining all day at these latitudes during the summer months.

Initially GROVER will stay within a 3-mile range of base camp where it will communicate with the research team over Wi-Fi. Once it's confirmed that all systems are GROVER, the robot will be let off the leash and its data recovered at the end of the summer. In the future, though, the researchers hope that GROVER will be able to report data in real time via satellite. Though capable of functioning autonomously, a satellite link would allow researchers to take control of GROVER remotely.

Source: NASA

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The use of drones in overseas conflicts has been the source of growing controversy over the years, and now, police are using them to hunt down criminals.

In the world of warfare, the drones are guided on combat missions remotely by pilots and computers thousands of miles away. But now, anyone can buy a drone — without the weapons — to fly here at home.

As CBS 2 investigative reporter Tamara Leitner reported Wednesday, that trend has a lot of people worried. The use of domestic drones has raised some serious safety concerns and is said to be a big threat to privacy.

While not as large, civilian drones are nearly as sophisticated, using high-definition cameras and GPS devices.

Some drones can fly as far as three football fields away, recording and streaming video the entire way.

Sameer Parekh of Falkor Systems programmed a drone to follow a T-shirt Leitner was wearing. He could actually see the drone following her.

“As you’re moving around, the camera could see our company logo and then follow you around,” Parekh explained.

Another custom-built drone provided a spectacular view nearly from 200 feet over Brooklyn.

The drones are loud on the ground, but barely detectable to the eye or ear in the sky. That is exactly what has critics worried.

They say it is one thing to fly a drone in an open field and a controlled environment, but even enthusiasts have concerns about one of these machines potentially being abused.

“My concerns relate to safety, because we don’t have the technology right now for drones to fly safely in crowded environments,” Parekh said.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/05/01/cbs-2-investigation-beware-of-domestic-drones-the-high-flying-spies/