Monthly Archives: January 2017

UAV180 UAS Traffic Management Concepts

Concepts for UAS traffic management (UTM) in urban areas, calls for a UTM system in Australia, Flirtey raises capital, a Great Sand Dunes National Park mapping project, and visualizing the airflow around a quadcopter.

UAS Traffic Management concepts

UAS Traffic Management (UTM) concepts, courtesy AIAA

UAV News

Deciding Rules Of The Road For Urban UAS

If large numbers of drones are ever to provide delivery services in urban areas, UAS traffic management rules need to be created to safely manage the flow. From the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ 2017 AIAA SciTech Forum in Grapevine, Texas, we learn about some of the concepts that NASA’s Ames Research Center is looking at for UAS traffic management in urban areas.

There are three basic concepts:

  • Sky-lanes: Vehicles must follow the centerline of each lane, and fly in one direction.
  • Sky-tubes: Vehicles move inside each tube, and fly only in one direction.
  • Sky-corridors: Vehicles can fly in any direction, but the vehicles themselves must maintain safe separation.

Time to Build an Australian National Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) System

The Association of Certified UAV Operators (ACUO) wants the Federal Government to “launch a program to design, develop and implement a continent-wide unmanned traffic management (UTM) system as the only viable means of achieving the safe integration of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS)… into national airspace.”

ACUO and others wanted the Senate to disallow the recent CASA drone regulations, and ACUO has presented a proposal: ACUO submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport [PDF].

ACUO has three major concerns:

  • How comprehensive was the risk assessment and safety case used by CASA as a basis for creating the concept of “Excluded RPA?”
  • What is the likely impact of the removal of training and certification for operators of “Excluded RPAS?”
  • What is the capacity and integrity of CASA’s own mechanisms and systems for ensuring compliance with the deregulated system.

Drone delivery startup Flirtey raises $16 million to become a next-gen UPS

Flirtey wants to be the world’s premier independent drone delivery service. Now the company has raised $16 million in Series A funding. Crunchbase Pro reports that 95 drone companies raised at least $500,000 in equity funding in 2016. The average funding was $6.8 million. Total invested was $482.8 million.

UAS Colorado Joins Wohnrade Civil Engineers for Great Sand Dunes National Park Mapping Project

A Swift Trainer fixed-wing UAS from Black Swift Technologies was used to map a portion of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado. The project used precision mapping with high-fidelity remote sensors to measure and monitor the dunes. Participating in the project were UAS Colorado (a non-profit business league), Black Swift Technologies, the National Park Service (NPS), and Wohnrade Civil Engineers, Inc. They plan to take the data they captured and compare it to airborne LiDAR data from the United States Geological Survey.

UAV Video of the Week

Watch Air Swirl Around a Quadcopter Drone’s Rotors

This visualization of the airflow around a DJI Phantom 3 demonstrates areas of low pressure, areas of high pressure, and disturbed air. To create the animation, a NASA aerospace engineer and a scientific visualization specialist ran a simulation on 1,024 cores of NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer. It took five days to compute. The results offer design implications for UAV efficiency and noise.

UAV179 Online UAS Training Offerings

Online UAS training from well-respected providers, a UAV traffic control project in Germany, the FAA levies the largest ever civil penalty for UAV operation, a jet-fueled UAV endurance record, and companies collaborating for agriculture applications.

Vanilla Aircraft VA001

The VA001 10-day Endurance UAS, courtesy Vanilla Aircraft

UAV News

King Schools Announces Unmanned Aircraft Knowledge Course

Embry-Riddle Offers UAV Basics Class Online

The names John and Martha King are synonymous with high-quality pilot training. Now King Schools offers a Drone Pilot Ground School and Test Prep Course that was jointly created with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). The online course covers everything you need to prepare for the FAA knowledge test and costs $99.

Meanwhile, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) has a free online course February 6 through February 19 called “Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) – Key Concepts for New Users.” The course will be taught in the “massive open online course” (MOOC) format and is open to an unlimited number of students, worldwide.

The ERAU course “…covers key concepts related to small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS)/recreational drones, including basic types/groups, capabilities, and current and future uses. Particular emphasis is placed on the safety of flight within the National Airspace System (NAS), including where to find the online flight planning tools to help make every flight as safe as possible. The MOOC also introduces the FAA’s new regulations (FAA Part 107) for sUAS operators who wish to operate commercially.”

Buckling Down On UAV Traffic Control

A UAV traffic control project is forming in Germany to develop technologies for the safe integration of unmanned aircraft in air traffic. Participants include air traffic control company DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung (the company in charge of air traffic control for Germany), as well as Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Post DHL Group, and RWTH Aachen University.

The project will:

  • Develop a prototype for a UAS traffic management system.
  • See if the Deutsche Telekom’s mobile network can be used to connect UAS.
  • Test package delivery in urban areas using autonomous aircraft, building on DHL’s success with the DHL Parcelcopter.
  • Investigate three UAS use cases: fire-fighting, agriculture, and logistics.

FAA and Skypan International, Inc., Reach Agreement on Unmanned Aircraft Enforcement Cases

In Episode 117 we reported that the FAA was considering a $1.9 million civil penalty against aerial photography company SkyPan International for conducting unauthorized operations over New York City and Chicago. Now the FAA and SkyPan have reached a settlement:

  • SkyPan will pay a $200,000 civil penalty and pay an additional $150,000 if it violates Federal Aviation Regulations in the next year.
  • SkyPan will work with the FAA to release three public service announcements in the next 12 months to support the FAA’s public outreach campaigns that encourage drone operators to learn and comply with UAS regulations.
  • SkyPan will pay an additional $150,000 if it fails to comply with the terms of the settlement agreement.

Jet fuel-powered UAV completes record 56-hour flight, with plenty left in the tank

Virginia-based Vanilla Aircraft, LLC announced that their VA001 unmanned aircraft system completed a non-stop, unrefueled 56-hour flight conducted at New Mexico State University’s Unmanned Air Systems Flight Test Center. The flight was submitted for a world duration record for combustion-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the 50-500 kg subclass. The flight was planned as a 120-hour mission, but ended early due to forecasted severe icing and range restrictions. However, the VA001 landed with enough JP-8 fuel on board for an additional 90 hours of flying.

Agribotix and senseFly Announce Agricultural Drone & Data Processing Solution

Agribotix and senseFly are combining their resources to offer agriculture a professional solution. The senseFly eBee SQ fixed wing agricultural drone is designed to capture crop data across four multispectral bands, plus RGB imagery, while covering hundreds of acres in a single flight. The eBee SQ is compatible with Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS). You can find the eBee SQ on the Agribotix website, along with the Agrion quadcopter. Agribotix is strong in agricultural data acquisition and analytics.

UAV Video of the Week

Drone Trippin on AirVūz

Drone Trippin is a new series on AirVūz with four of the world’s top FPV pilots flying around gorgeous backdrops, ripping through abandoned structures, and racing through breathtaking locations. Started December 2016. AirVūz was launched in late 2015 as a video-sharing platform for the drone community. It includes user-generated content and original programming.

Mentioned

Top Drone Websites On The Internet 2017

 

 

 

UAV178 GoPro Karma Drone to be Relaunched

GoPro will relaunch its Karma foldable drone, FAA approves Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) operations at a UAS test site, a drone strike on an airliner proves to be false, a new droneport is taking shape, a Canadian company offers fuel cell-powered drones, and autonomous drone swarming is a success.

EnergyOr H2Quad 1000 drone

The H2Quad 1000 fuel cell-powered drone, courtesy EnergyOr

UAV News

GoPro is relaunching its Karma drone after an embarrassing recall

GoPro Karma drone

The GoPro Karma drone

The new GoPro Karma foldable drone was quickly recalled shortly after becoming available last year. GoPro CEO Nick Woodman says that the drones loss of power and subsequent dive was caused by a “basic battery retention issue.” Details of the Karma relaunch are expected in February 2017.

 

Nation’s first BVLOS UAS operations approved

The FAA has granted the Northern Plains UAS Test Site in North Dakota approval to operate large unmanned aircraft beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS). The UAS test site can use ground-based sense-and-avoid technologies to phases in BVLOS operations.

African airline reports drone collision with passenger jet

African airline LAM said a Boeing 737-700 on approach at about 4,000 feet was struck by a drone. Widely published photographs showed the damaged nose. Subsequently, the Aviation Herald published Incident: LAM B737 at Tete on Jan 5th 2017, radome structural failure. After its investigation, Mozambique’s Civil Aviation Authority says most likely the radome experienced a structural failure, not a foreign object strike.

Eldorado Droneport Design Revealed

Specific plans for privately operated Eldorado Droneport have been announced. Aerodrome will offer UAS training, FAA repairman and pilot certification and testing, and other educational, research and development services for commercial and recreational drone operators. Plans for the 50-acre site include a 15,000 square foot terminal building; 860,000 square feet facilities for research and development, warehousing, hangar, office, and training; and “build-to-suit” opportunities.

French Air Force Gets Fuel Cell Powered Quad

The French Air Force is acquiring the H2Quad 1000 drone from Montreal-based EnergyOr Technologies inc. EnergyOr says “the fuel cell/battery hybrid system has been optimized based on extensive UAV flight testing in several different platform configurations. It has been tested in widely varying environmental conditions and can meet the rigorous demands of operational UAVs.”

US demos ‘one of the world’s largest’ micro-UAV swarms

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is continuing to develop autonomous swarming drones.

Originally designed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 2013, the Perdix micro-drones have been air-dropped from an F-16 in 2014, and an F/A-18 in 2016. In its Perdix Fact Sheet [PDF], DOD says:

“Perdix are not preprogrammed, synchronized individuals.  They share a distributed brain for decision‐making and adapt to each other, and the environment, much like swarms in nature. Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to changes in drone numbers. This allows this team of small inexpensive drones to perform missions once done by large expensive ones.”

Capturing the Swarm

The CBS television program 60 Minutes was allowed to film a swarm of 100 Perdix autonomous drones. The number of drones, their speed, and their unpredictable behavior made capturing them on video more difficult than anticipated!

UAV Video of the Week

One man’s mission to walk the Great Wall of China with a drone

 

 

 

UAV177 FPV Flying Wings

The owner of an FPV flying wing company describes their design, construction, and applications. In the news, Amazon patents a floating warehouse concept, and the EU moves closer to an RPAS regulations roadmap.

Ruben Jauregui, owner of SweepWingsRC

Ruben Jauregui, owner of SweepWingsRC

Guest

Ruben Jauregui is the owner of SweepWingsRC, a maker of FPV flying wings. In 2010, Ruben received a little UMX Vapor indoor flyer and over time he grew more interested in RC flying. He built his own RC aircraft in 2011, and then FPV flying wings came along for him in 2012. He soon went out and sourced the materials to make his own wings. By 2013, Ruben had made and tested his own design and came up with the name for his brand. By 2014, Ruben was officially a small company owner.

We talk about flying wing design, construction, and applications. Ruben tells us how flying wings and multirotors differ from the operator’s perspective. He describes his flying wing designs, their payload capabilities, and the impressive speeds they can reach.

SweepWingsRC videos:

FPV Paradise – Hawaii – Flying Wing

FPV Paradise Tour – Las Vegas – Sweepwings

Sweepwings at Drone World’s – Hawaii 2016

UAV News

Amazon patent hints at floating warehouses in the sky

The patent, Airborne fulfillment center utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for item delivery, describes “an airborne fulfillment center (‘AFC’) and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (‘UAV’) to deliver items from the AFC to users. For example, the AFC may be an airship that remains at a high altitude (e.g., 45,000 feet) and UAVs with ordered items may be deployed from the AFC to deliver ordered items to user designated delivery locations. As the UAVs descend, they can navigate horizontally toward a user specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilize the UAV and/or guide the direction of descent. Shuttles (smaller airships) may be used to replenish the AFC with inventory, UAVs, supplies, fuel, etc. Likewise, the shuttles may be utilized to transport workers to and from the AFC.”

Roadmap for drone operations in the European Union (EU), The roll-out of the EU operation centric approach [PDF]

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in Europe is working on the preparation of a Specific Operation Risk Assessment (SORA), and Operations Manual. RPAS Regulations is a guide to international rules and regulations for remotely piloted aircraft systems. (Note this is a restricted access site – registration is required.)

UAV Video of the Week

BMT UAV performs perched landing using machine learning algorithms

sUAS News reports that the University of Bristol in partnership with BMT Defence Services (BMT) has used machine learning algorithms to allow a UAV to make a perched landing.

Video: Learning to perch a UAV on the ground using deep reinforcement learning

Mentioned

Drone delivery makes it into a Garfield cartoon.