The British Drone Law Reaches Parliament

December 5, 2017 by 52 Comments

We’ve brought you a variety of stories over the years covering the interface between multirotor fliers and the law, and looked at the credibility gap between some official incident reports and the capabilities of real drones. In the news this week is a proposed new law in front of the British House of Commons that would bring in a licensing scheme for machines weighing over 250 g, as well as new powers to seize drones. We’ve previously told you about the consultation that led up to it, and its original announcement.

As a British voter with some interest in the matter, I decided to write to my Member of Parliament about it, and since my letter says what I would have written to cover the story anyway it stands below in lieu of the normal Hackaday article format. If you are a British multirotor flier this is an issue you need to be aware of, and if you have any concerns you should consider raising them with your MP as well. Continue reading “The British Drone Law Reaches Parliament” →

Flame Throwing Drone Is Actually Useful

December 3, 2017 by 40 Comments

A team in Xiangyang, China is using a flame-throwing drone to clear debris from high voltage power lines. These lines are made of metal of course, and are impervious to the high heat of the flames. Any type debris that gets on the lines will be charred to a cinder in just a few seconds. This is all is quite a bit safer than sending a human with some type stick up there near the high voltage lines.

Over the years here at Hackaday, we’ve seen people attach some strange things to drones. We can all recall the drone with a real firing pistol. And how about that drone with the huge flamethrower trying to cook a turkey. And let’s not forget the drone that fires bottle rockets.  [Caleb Kraft] did a write-up about hacking the AR drone years ago and mentioned that someone put an Estes-rocket on a drone.  While all of these are incredibly dangerous, ill-advised and for the most part useless, this new power line clearing drone may be the first exception we’ve seen.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen someone put on a drone?

Continue reading “Flame Throwing Drone Is Actually Useful” →

High-Speed Drones Use AI To Spoil The Fun

November 29, 2017 by 17 Comments

Some people look forward to the day when robots have taken over all our jobs and given us an economy where we can while our days away on leisure activities. But if your idea of play is drone racing, you may be out of luck if this AI pilot for high-speed racing drones has anything to say about it.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has been working for the past two years to develop the algorithms needed to let high-performance UAVs navigate typical drone racing obstacles, and from the look of the tests in the video below, they’ve made a lot of progress. The system is vision based, with the AI drones equipped with wide-field cameras looking both forward and down. The indoor test course has seemingly random floor tiles scattered around, which we guess provide some kind of waypoints for the drones. A previous video details a little about the architecture, and it seems the drones are doing the computer vision on-board, which we find pretty impressive.

Despite the program being bankrolled by Google, we’re sure no evil will come of this, and that we’ll be in no danger of being chased down by swarms of high-speed flying killbots anytime soon. For now we can take solace in the fact that JPL’s algorithms still can’t beat an elite human pilot like [Ken Loo], who bested the bots overall. But alarmingly, the human did no better than the bots on his first lap, which suggests that once the AI gets a little creativity and intuition like that needed to best a Go champion, [Ken] might need to find another line of work.

Continue reading “High-Speed Drones Use AI To Spoil The Fun” →

Russian Drone Can Lift 142 Phantom 3 Drones

November 28, 2017 by 58 Comments

Russia has long been known for making large machines. They hold the current record for the largest helicopter ever made – the MiL V12. Same goes for the world’s largest airplane, the Antonov An-225. Largest submarine? Yep, they made that too – the Typhoon class. It would appear they’ve thrown their hat in the drone business as well.

While the SKYF drone is made by a private Russian company, it is one of the largest drones we’ve ever seen. Able to lift 400 pounds (a Phantom 3 weighs 2.8 pounds) and can fly for eight hours, the SKYF drone is a nice piece of aeronautical engineering. Quad-copter style drones provide lift by brute force, and are typically plagued with low lift capacities and short flight times. The SKYF triumphs over these limitations by using gasoline powered engines for lift and electric motors for navigation.

It’s still in the prototype stage and being advertised for use in natural disasters and the agriculture industry. Check out the video in the link above to see the SKYF in action.

What’s the largest drone you’ve seen?

Thanks to [Itay] for the tip!

Your Drone Is Cool, But It’s No Jet Fighter

November 16, 2017 by 45 Comments

There are some communities with whom our happy band of hardware hackers share a lot in common, but with whom we don’t often associate. The more workshop-orientated end of the car modification or railway modeler scenes, for instance, or the model aircraft fraternity. Many of these communities exist more for the activity than for the making, some of them dabble with building kits, but among them are a hard core of people who create amazing projects from scratch.

Take [Igor Negoda], for example. Not content with building just any model aircraft, he’s built his own from scratch, to his own design. And if designing for yourself what amounts to a scaled-down jet fighter wasn’t enough, he’s also built his own jet engine to power it. His videos are all in Russian so use YouTube’s subtitle feature if you’re not a Russian speaker, but they’re so good that if you couldn’t access the English translation you’d want to learn the language just to hear his commentary.

The video below the break shows us first a fast-taxi test using a ducted fan, then a full test flight with the jet engine. There is an explanation of the fuel system and the flight control systems, before an impressive flight from what appears to be a former Cold War-era runway. There are a few funny moments such as transporting a large model jet aircraft in a small hatchback car, but the quality of the work in a garage workshop shines through. Suddenly a multirotor doesn’t cut it any more, we want a jet aircraft like [Igor]’s!

Continue reading “Your Drone Is Cool, But It’s No Jet Fighter” →

Drone License Plates: An Idea That Won’t Stave Off The Inevitable

November 13, 2017 by 75 Comments

As more and more drones hit the skies, we are beginning to encounter a modest number of problems that promise to balloon if ignored. 825,000 drones above a quarter-kilo in weight were sold in the U.S. in 2016. The question has become, how do we control all these drones?

Continue reading “Drone License Plates: An Idea That Won’t Stave Off The Inevitable” →

This Drone Can Fly, Swim, And Explode….. Wait, What?

October 30, 2017 by 17 Comments

You’ve probably heard of micro-drones, perhaps even nano-drones, but there research institutions that shrink these machines down to the size of insects. Leading from the [Wiss Institute For Biologically Inspired Engineering] at Harvard University, a team of researchers have developed a miniscule robot that — after a quick dip — literally explodes out of the water.

To assist with the take off, RoboBee has four buoyant outriggers to keep it near the water’s surface as it uses electrolysis to brew oxyhydrogen in its gas chamber. Once enough of the combustible gas has accumulated — pushing the robot’s wings out of the water in the process– a sparker ignites the fuel, thrusting it into the air. As yet, the drone has difficulty remaining in the air after this aquatic takeoff, but we’re excited to see that change soon.

Looking like a cross between a water strider and a bee, the team suggest this latest version of the RoboBee series  — a previous iteration used electrostatic adhesion to stick to walls — could be used for search and rescue, environmental monitoring, and biological studies. The capacity to transition from aerial surveyor, to underwater explorer and back again would be incredibly useful, but in such a small package, it is troublesome at best. Hence the explosions.

Continue reading “This Drone Can Fly, Swim, And Explode….. Wait, What?” →