Indian Army’s Drone Use: Satellite Navigation in GPS-Denied Environments by Kartik Bommakanti
December 5, 2023
Introduction:
(Observer Foundation) The Indian Army (IA) recently announced a move to replace mules and choppers with drones for supplies along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, Leh, and Northeastern India. The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will supply medicines and food to troops in remotely deployed forces or Border Observation Posts (BOPs). Fitted with proximity sensors, these UAVs can fly in all weather conditions and they are all GPS-guided. This latest use of drones by the IA comes against the backdrop of the IA’s operational deployment of dedicated UAVs for Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) missions in Eastern Ladakh and along the Sino-Indian boundary in 2022. Serving as force-multipliers, these latter set of drones are Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled, making them capable of communicating with each other while coordinating and supporting close air-to-ground operations for the IA’s infantry, mechanised infantry, mobile artillery and armoured formations. In addition, the Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) system that they are equipped with can identify a whole range of targets including enemy artillery units, tanks, infantry formations, and static installations.
Although drones are a good substitute for piloted aircraft in hazardous weather conditions, it's obviously still best for their users if the things don't crash. The Czech-designed ThunderFly TF-G1 autogyro drone was created with that fact in mind.
Autogyros (aka gyroplanes or gyrocopters) are small aircraft with a powered propeller that pushes or pulls them forward, along with a non-powered set of rotor blades on top. As the prop moves the plane horizontally, air passes through the rotor blades, causing them to spin and produce lift.
It's sort of like a cross between a helicopter and a fixed-wing airplane. That said, due to the manner in which autogyros create lift, they're considerably more energy-efficient than helicopters, plus they're easier to pilot.
They can also maintain stable flight at slower speeds than fixed-wing aircraft, plus they're much less affected by high winds and wind gusts. That's where the TF-G1 is intended to come in.
While it has a number of potential uses, the drone is designed chiefly for applications such as weather research and search and rescue. It can carry up to 5 kg (11 lb) worth of equipment like meteorological sensors and thermal cameras, and can reportedly flight for over one hour per charge of its lithium battery.
2024 Will be a Breakout Year for Delivery Drones by Joann Muller
January 2, 2024
Introduction:
(Axios) After more than a decade of development, delivery drones are finally going mainstream this year.
• Still, they won't be quite as ubiquitous as the blue Amazon vans or brown UPS trucks in your neighborhood — yet.
What's happening: With some (but not all) regulatory hurdles cleared, retailers, medical centers and logistics platforms will start offering drone delivery in many more suburban neighborhoods in 2024.
• That means receiving meals, prescriptions and household items at your doorstep in less than 30 minutes.
Why it matters: More electric drones in the sky means fewer noisy trucks on the road and less tailpipe emissions.
Oregon State University Study Shows One Person Can Supervise ‘Swarm’ of 100 Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles February 4, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) CORVALLIS, Ore. – Research involving Oregon State University has shown that a “swarm” of more than 100 autonomous ground and aerial robots can be supervised by one person without subjecting the individual to an undue workload.
The findings represent a big step toward efficiently and economically using swarms in a range of roles from wildland firefighting to package delivery to disaster response in urban environments.
“We don’t see a lot of delivery drones yet in the United States, but there are companies that have been deploying them in other countries,” said Julie A. Adams of the OSU College of Engineering. “It makes business sense to deploy delivery drones at a scale, but it will require a single person be responsible for very large numbers of these drones. I’m not saying our work is a final solution that shows everything is OK, but it is the first step toward getting additional data that would facilitate that kind of a system.”
The results, published in Field Robotics, stem from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’ program known as OFFSET, short for Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics. Adams was part of a group that received an OFFSET grant in 2017.
During the course of the four-year project, researchers deployed swarms of up to 250 autonomous vehicles – multi-rotor aerial drones, and ground rovers – able to gather information in “concrete canyon” urban surroundings where line-of-sight, satellite-based communication is impaired by buildings. The information the swarms collect during their missions at military urban training sites have the potential to help keep U.S. troops and civilians more safe.
BAE Systems shows off mystery drone at defense show
By David Szondy
February 07, 2024
In a teaser of things to come, BAE Systems has displayed a model of its future drone at the World Defense Show in Riyadh. Steeped in more mystery than a Raymond Chandler novel, it gives us a hint of what future military drones might look like.
International defense shows can often be more like bird watching events than showcases for the latest military hardware. Defense contractors don't just like to show off their wares for sale, they also like to give a glimpse of what might be on the way. Oftentimes, these will be in the form of models or concept images on display without any explanation of what they are.
Though this can be a bit frustrating for the curious, it does provide something of an air of adventure to the proceedings.
weatheriscool wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:21 am
BAE Systems shows off mystery drone at defense show
By David Szondy
February 07, 2024
In a teaser of things to come, BAE Systems has displayed a model of its future drone at the World Defense Show in Riyadh. Steeped in more mystery than a Raymond Chandler novel, it gives us a hint of what future military drones might look like.
International defense shows can often be more like bird watching events than showcases for the latest military hardware. Defense contractors don't just like to show off their wares for sale, they also like to give a glimpse of what might be on the way. Oftentimes, these will be in the form of models or concept images on display without any explanation of what they are.
Though this can be a bit frustrating for the curious, it does provide something of an air of adventure to the proceedings.
Researchers have proposed a new strategy for the shape assembly of robot swarms based on the idea of mean-shift exploration: When a robot is surrounded by neighboring robots and unoccupied locations, it actively gives up its current location by exploring the highest density of nearby unoccupied locations in the desired shape.
The study, titled, "Mean-shift exploration in shape assembly of robot swarms," has been published in Nature Communications.
This idea is realized by adapting the mean-shift algorithm, an optimization technique widely used in machine learning for locating the maxima of a density function.
When surrounded by other robots and unoccupied locations, a robot explores the highest density of nearby unoccupied locations in the desired shape as identified by the mean-shift optimization.
The proposed strategy was verified by experiments with swarms of 50 ground robots, which demonstrates its potential to be adapted to generate interesting behaviors including shape regeneration, cooperative cargo transportation, and complex environment exploration.
Dr. Roderich Gross at the University of Sheffield has collaborated on this work with researchers from Westlake University, Beihang University and Tsinghua University.
How ‘robocop’ police drones could soon be the first responders to 999 calls
March 7, 2024 3:33 pm
For Britons used to the first response to a 999 call to police being the reassuring siren of an approaching patrol car, the buzz overhead of a remotely-operated drone may seem a disconcerting alternative.
This, however, was the glimpse of future policing reality offered by Jeremy Hunt when he used his Budget speech to announce £230m for law enforcement technology, including the advent of drones as emergency first responders.
Police in Britain already fly some 400 quadcopters carrying cameras and sensors, for uses from monitoring large-scale events to recording crime locations. But while these drones are piloted by officers on the scene, who must maintain visual contact with their airborne machine, the new system envisaged by the Government and senior police officers looks very different.
Instead of using machines unpacked at the scene of an emergency, the “drone as first responder” model (DFR in police jargon) will use multiple quadcopters stationed in launch boxes – commonly on top of buildings – and flown remotely by pilots from a central control room to wherever they are needed.
The result, according to proponents of the system, is that a drone can be at the site of a 999 call, relaying back to officers live images of what has happened or is happening, in a fraction of the time it takes for a police vehicle to arrive.
Wave Engine Corp has aced a demonstration flight of a simple jet engine with no moving parts. A modern version of a pulsejet, the J-1 engine powered a UAV through take-off and several mid-air stop/starts before the aircraft nailed the landing.
The Wave Engine is an evolution of the pulsejet engine, a simple jet propulsion device where air is fed into a chamber and fuel introduced. This is ignited to produce a fireball that forces high-pressure heated gasses down a tube and out of the tailpipe, creating thrust. As this happens, the pressure inside the engine drops and creates a partial vacuum which draws fresh air in, and another burst of fuel is ignited to repeat the process.
A supersonic drone that will be propelled by a revolutionary new engine has taken to the skies for the first time. When Venus Aerospace's aircraft does go supersonic on a later date, it will be powered by a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE).
Supersonic drones may sound like something bleeding edge, but they're surprisingly old hat as a basic concept. As far back as the early 1950s, the US Air Force was fielding remote-controlled supersonic jets for targets to test air defenses, as platforms for reconnaissance in dangerous areas, or as weapons armed with conventional or nuclear warheads.
However, the one thing they've all had in common over the past 75 years was a jet engine for propulsion to boost them past Mach 1. In recent years, advances in avionics, aerodynamics, and autonomous systems have allowed uncrewed aircraft to expand their roles, but at their heart, they were still jet propelled.
The Case For Arming U.S. Navy Warships With Drone Swarms by Tyler Rogoway
April 4, 2024
Introduction:
(The Drive) Drone attacks on warships have been in the news a lot lately, ushering in what is arguably a new era of naval combat, one that even the most powerful navies in the world don't appear ready to fully confront on a grand scale.
In and around the Red Sea, the constant Houthi aerial drone attacks on ships, including U.S. and allied surface combatants, have made major headlines. Near Ukraine, we have seen repeated successful attacks on Russian warships via unmanned surface vessels. The use of relatively inexpensive unmanned systems in a maritime context is typically viewed through the lens of them being threats to warships. However, the potential for lower-end drones to be used to those same warships' advantages, both defensively and offensively, is arguably just as big of a deal.
Northrop Grumman introduces its first completed prototype Manta Ray Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle (UUV) that it is developing for DARPA. The extra-large submarine glider is designed to carry out long-range undersea missions without human assistance.
When you've been dealing with engineering problems as long as nature has, you're bound to come up with an impressive list of good ideas and human engineers have recognised this going back to Leonardo da Vinci and bird-based flying machines. Taking a cue from this, Northrop Grumman has come up with the Manta Ray, which combines the hydrodynamics of its namesake fish with some high-tech autonomous systems and energy-saving propulsion.
Not a lot has been released about Manta Ray. Even though its dimensions are hush hush, the vehicle is supposed to be long-range and large-scale. It's designed to carry a variety of payloads for different missions with an emphasis on endurance rather than speed.
Who would have thought swarming robo-bees could be so captivating?
By Paul Ridden
April 29, 2024
We've seen some impressive nature-inspired flying bots from the creative minds at Festo's Bionic Learning Network over the years, but the autonomous BionicBee is not only the smallest so far but also the first capable of swarming.
Around about this time every year, Festo heads to Hannover Messe to share its latest automation developments and innovations at the "world's leading industrial technology trade show." If we're lucky, the company also has some fun new bots to demonstrate that take design cues from nature.
We've previously been enthralled by majestic flying penguins, a hoptastic kangaroo, huge dragonflies, an ultralight herring gull, a flying fox, a pipe-inspecting cuttlefish, cooperative worker ants and gorgeous butterflies that flutter around without crashing into each other. And now we have a swarm of robo-bees.
Responder drone gets eyes on emergencies – and can even take action
By Ben Coxworth
May 27, 2024
https://newatlas.com/drones/responder-d ... -response/
Wouldn't it be neat to see a drone using flashing blue and red lights and a siren to chase down crooks? Well, the Responder quadcopter comes equipped with both, along with other gear designed to help quicken response times when crimes or other emergencies occur.
Manufactured by Seattle-based startup Brinc, the Responder is intended for use by police forces, fire departments, ambulance services and other first response agencies.
Along with its lights and siren, the autonomous drone is also equipped with a 40x-zoom HD optical camera array; a thermal imaging camera; a spotlight; a two-way communications system including a speaker and microphone; plus a payload system that allows the aircraft to carry and drop life-saving items such as EpiPens, automated external defibrillators, personal floatation devices, and naloxone (for treating opioid overdoses).
