Tag Archives: Africa

303 Ehang Autonomous Aerial Vehicle

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EHang is flying its urban air mobility vehicle contender. Remote identification of drones is moving forward. Also, using drones to measure methane emissions, find standing water where mosquitoes breed, assess hurricane damage, explore Titan, and plant trees.

UAV News

EHang completes first passenger-carrying autonomous aerial vehicle demonstration flight

The EHang 216 passenger-carrying autonomous aerial vehicle (or AAV) was flown at the 2019 Northeast Asia Expo in August. Ehang has been demonstrating the aircraft at several cities in China as well as in Austria, the Netherlands, and Qatar. Ehang says, “This is a critical step towards making our dream [a] reality and to make urban air mobility broadly available and affordable as a safe, fast, and eco-friendly transportation alternative.”

Video: EHang AAV Trial Flights Across Cities in China

Electronic License Plates for Drones May Come Soon

A draft of the proposed ASTM standard for electronic identification of drones is available as ASTM WK65041, “New Specification for UAS Remote ID and Tracking.” During operation, a drone would transmit a unique ID, location, and vector. The chairman of ASTM International’s Committee F38 on Unmanned Aircraft Systems said, “You can just take a phone, point it up at a drone and get its electronic ID if you see it doing something dangerous. [And you can report it] just like reporting a car’s license plate number.” Old drones can be retrofitted with ID chips that would plug into their USB ports and might cost $7 to $12.

BP deploys continuous methane measurement for new major oil and gas projects

BP said it is going to monitor its methane emissions around the world using a technology called gas cloud imaging and drones. Inspections would take 30 minutes instead of seven days. The sensor technology was originally designed by NASA for the Mars Curiosity Rover. This is a key part of BP’s strategy to deploy a suite of complementary methane detecting techniques across new and existing facilities.

Anthropology professor deploys drone to fight disease in Africa

Mosquitoes are the main transmitters of malaria, and they breed in standing water. Agricultural irrigation can create standing water which is difficult to detect with satellite imagery. In the East African nation of Malawi, Professor Jon Carroll and other researchers from Oakland University spent nine days collecting data on the effectiveness of drone imagery to detect standing water.

AIRT uses UAS to perform damage assessment operations in the Bahamas following Hurricane Dorian

Two organizations have formed a joint-reconnaissance team to survey the Bahamas following Hurricane Dorian: the Airborne International Response Team (AIRT) and the Southeast Florida Region 7 All-Hazards Incident Management Team (SEFL-R7 AHIMT). Disaster scenes were mapped by UAS with high-resolution camera systems.

Meet The Nuclear-Powered Self-Driving Drone NASA Is Sending To A Moon Of Saturn

The Dragonfly is a dual-rotor quadcopter, about the size of a compact car, autonomous, and nuclear powered. Expected to launch from Earth in 2026 and arrive on Titan in 2034, Dragonfly will explore Titan’s dunes, mountains, gullies, and rivers and lakes of liquid methane.

NASA Video: New Dragonfly Mission Flying Landing Sequence Animation.

Middle East drones signal end to era of fast jet air supremacy

Air superiority has been key to winning wars since airplanes were invented. But compared to the world’s major air forces, drones are small, low cost, and they don’t put a pilot into the war-zone.

This startup lets you subscribe to support an army of drones that’s planting millions of trees

A new startup called Now wants to “mobilize humanity to reverse the climate crisis.” The organization was created by 19-year-old activist and musical artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez who says that if a trillion trees are planted, they could capture two-thirds of the carbon that humans have emitted since the industrial revolution. The subscription concept of Now would fund planting trees with drones. See also 19-Year-Old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez Isn’t Waiting For Permission to Solve the Climate Crisis: “The Time Is NOW.”

Conference

Commercial UAV Expo Americas 2019, October 28-30, 2019 in Las Vegas. Video: Commercial UAV Expo 2018 in a minute.

272 FAA Draft NPRM for Night Flying and Flights over People

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The FAA has released a draft of the NPRM that proposes rules for night flying and flights over people. Also, three UAS UTM Pilot Program projects awarded, drones survey Africa and identify illegal activity in India, Japan will issue underwater drone guidelines, and NASA contemplates a quadcopter for Titan.

UAV News

New FAA proposal would let drones fly over people and at night without a waiver

Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao released a draft NPRM [PDF] that removes waiver requirements for flying after dark and flying over people. It expands the activities permitted under Part 107.

Night flying for small UAS would be allowed without a waiver or exemption. Drone operators would be required to “complete knowledge testing or training, including new subject matter areas related to operating at night.” The sUAS would have “an anti-collision light illuminated and visible for at least 3 statute miles.”

Flights over people would be allowed without a waiver or exemption under certain conditions. The FAA proposes three categories of permissible operations over people based on the risk of injury they present.

The NPRM is to be published in the federal register soon, followed by a 60-day open comment period.

State of Nevada Unmanned Aircraft System Test Site Selected for Milestone DOT / FAA UAS Traffic Management Pilot Program

The FAA-designated State of Nevada UAS Test Site was awarded a project under the UAS UTM Pilot Program. The Smart Silver State project will focus on urban drone operations using advanced airspace, drone, and sensor technology. The Nevada UAS Test Site proposal included over 20 partners and the project will be demonstrated in the City of Reno with additional testing in other areas.

Drones for good: UAVs help survey poorly mapped areas of Africa

Many areas in rural Africa are poorly mapped and having GPS doesn’t help disaster relief agencies and local authorities. Now people in Tanzania are volunteering to survey unmapped areas with drones. In Zanzibar, a mapping initiative was started in 2016 to survey about 900 square miles with senseFly eBee drones taking high-resolution images.

Government keen on drones with night-vision to track illegal sand mining

Eight months ago the Indian government started a UAV surveillance project targeting illegal riverbed sand mining. Forty-six UAV missions were flown with a 48 percent success rate. Now the Geology & Mining Department is looking at fixed-wing drones with infrared for night surveillance.

Japan to set rules for drones

The Japanese government plans to issue guidelines for underwater drones by fiscal 2020. This is a response to increased private sector use for missions such as inspecting offshore wind power plants and underwater pipelines. Expected guidelines include collision avoidance mechanisms and collection of drones after their batteries are depleted.

NASA May Decide This Year to Land a Drone on Saturn’s Moon Titan

The proposed Dragonfly mission to explore Saturn’s moon Titan is one of the options NASA is considering. Titan has a thick atmosphere (four times as dense as Earth) which allows for a flying vehicle instead of a rover. The quadcopter would fly to multiple sites to conduct experiments, recharging its flight batteries via nuclear power. The project is led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

Artist's impression of Dragonfly at work on Titan's surface.
Artist’s impression of Dragonfly at work on Titan’s surface. Dragonfly’s focused instrument payload would help scientists answer key questions about prebiotic chemistry and astrobiology, meteorology, geophysics and geomorphology. Image credit: Johns Hopkins APL.

Mentioned

From Rupprecht Law: Drone Sprayers: Uses, Laws & Regulations, Tips to Save Money

UAV012 We Want Drone Safety Rules

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Piaggio

 

This Episode:

Drone safety rules, an affordable Piaggio MALE UAV, a drone incursion that turns out to be birds, the Taranis UAS makes it’s first flight, VTOL UAVs, the Aussie CASA threatens fines, the impact of UAVs on the NextGen ATC system, and looking at drones to deliver cargo in Africa.

The News:

No Seat Belts Required: Drone Hobbyists Talk Safety

Hobbies grow up and then the hard questions come up. Like when do you start to make rules? The FAA is working on regulations but at the local levels, authorities don’t know what to do.

Piaggio touts Avanti-based UAV as European MALE solution

Italian airframer Piaggio believes there is a market for an affordable medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned air vehicle. They have displayed a mock-up of their Hammerhead intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft based on the Piaggio P180 Avanti II twin-pusher business aircraft.

What IAF thought were Pakistani drones turned out to be migratory birds

India and Pakistan do not enjoy the best relationship, and airspace incursions are treated seriously. So when India detected the approach of unmanned aircraft, they scrambled the Air Force, which found nothing. A mystery. It turns out that with a strong tailwind, migratory birds can fly at high speeds.

BAE Taranis Makes First Test Flight in Australia

BAE Systems had a successful maiden flight of their stealthy Taranis unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) technology demonstrator.

Hybrid VTOL UAVs – Back to the Future

The Aerovel Flexrotor is the first autonomous launch and recovery of an unmanned aircraft from an unmanned boat. The Flexrotor takes off vertically, then transitions from rotor-borne to wing-borne flight.

The Aerie design harkens back to the 1944 Focke-Wulf Triebflügel (thrust-wing) where the wings spun like a rotor for vertical flight then transitioned to a propellor for horizontal flight.

CASA warns bushfire drone operators of potential fines

The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority says two remotely piloted drone flights over wildfires in Lithgow and the Blue Mountains put firefighters at risk, and looks to have breached the Civic Aviation Safety Regulations, which state that remotely piloted aircraft must be kept 30 metres from people unless otherwise approved.

UAS Tidal Wave to Hit Future ATC Systems

At the Aviation Week NextGen conference, one panel looked at Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in light of the DOT report Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Service Demand, 2015-2035 [PDF], prepared for the U.S. Air Force. The report projects large numbers of UAS’s in the airspace, but this was not contemplated when NextGen was originally envisioned.

Can Cargo Drones Bring E-Commerce To Africa?

Countries that lag technologically sometimes leapfrog other more advanced economies. Perhaps the African continent has the opportunity to leapfrog the rest of the world and utilize drones to as a transportation method for goods. The Swiss École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is launching what they are calling the Flying Donkey Challenge, where teams create unmanned cargo aircraft to fly around Mount Kenya.