Tag Archives: Kansas

UAV182 Super Bowl Goes Gaga Over Drones

Drones appear at the Super Bowl, Kansas wants to be an unmanned aircraft leader, UAS for newsgathering gains momentum, an unmanned air combat drone, drones that seed clouds, and those that pollinate.

Intel drones light show

Intel® Shooting Star™ drones light show at Super Bowl LI

UAV News

Lady Gaga Halftime Drone Swarm Was Pretaped to Shield Crowd

The Super Bowl LI halftime show included 300 drones choreographed by Intel. The drones were filmed in advance to comply with the requirement for no flights over people, and the TFR in effect for the event. Also, One of Amazon’s delivery drones showed up in a Super Bowl ad. In the Amazon TV commercial, an Amazon Echo is used to order Doritos from Amazon Prime Air, then the drone appears outside the window.

Kansas UAS director outlines initial drone plans

Kansas Department of Transportation’s unmanned aircraft systems director Bob Brock wants to make the state a leader in UAS technology. Brock wants to protect privacy, ensure public safety, help farmers and ranchers adopt UAS to reduce costs and increase yields, and make Kansas a leader in the UAS industry.

WBRC FOX6 News first to use drones for news, weather, traffic coverage

WBRC FOX6 News in Birmingham, Alabama now has two licensed drone pilots. They plan to use their “Sky Tracker” drone for weather and traffic coverage, newsgathering, marketing and creative services, tower inspections, and sales initiatives.

More Details Emerge On Kratos’ Optionally Expendable Air Combat Drones

Kratos Unmanned System Division (KUSD) is developing the XQ-222 unmanned air combat vehicle (UCAV). In 2016, Kratos was awarded a demonstration contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory under the Low-Cost Attritable Strike Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Demonstration (LCASD) initiative. KUSD said under the contract award, they “will design, develop, deliver, demonstrate and test a technical baseline for a high-speed, long-range, low-cost, limited life-strike UAS.”

Can drones make it rain? Nevada officials upbeat on cloud-seeding prospects

In 2016, the Nevada Institute For Autonomous Systems (NIAS) successfully tested a cloud-seeding payload flown by a fixed-wing drone. This generated a lot of interest from around the world. They expect to make major strides with cloud-seeding operations within the next few weeks.

Scientists Are Building Bee-Like Drones to Fight the Coming Bee-Pocalypse

Some data suggests that the bee population is shrinking worldwide. Bees are critical for pollination so the potential impact on crops is large. Now scientists from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan are exploring a solution. They found that a certain sticky substance was good at picking up pollen. Then they glued animal hair to the bottom of a tiny G-Force PXY CAM drone and applied the sticky goo to the hair. Just by flying around and knocking into flowers, the drone picked up and deposited pollen grains.

UAV Videos of the Week

DARPA demonstrates SideArm UAS capture system

DARPA’s SideArm research effort seeks to create a self-contained, portable apparatus able to horizontally launch and retrieve unmanned aerial systems of up to 900 pounds. In December 2016, Aurora Flight Sciences successfully tested a full-scale technology demonstration system.

Mavic Pro on Floats

Listener Mike attended the Central Florida Mavic Owners group meet-up, and one of the guys had a Gator Skinned Mavic on floats. He recorded some video of the float Mavik with his own Mavic.

Mentioned

The  “RETREEV Compact Retrieval Tool” from TEC Accessories, a very small pocket-sized grappling hook that might be helpful to retrieving drones from trees (or your keys from a storm drain).