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‘drone’ Stories

Remember that “UFO” spotted in June? Well, here it is in daylight

, Aug 1st 2012 Discuss [0]

Not so much little green men as no men at all: the craft that triggered 911 calls and Twitter furore after being mistaken for a UFO back in June has been put on show by the US Navy, a human-made drone rather than ET's escape pod. The X-47B is a new, experimental unmanned aircraft the Navy has admitted, with a spokesperson telling Fox 5 that while the stealth aircraft wasn't meant to be a secret, the team "all got a laugh" after it was confused for something extraterrestrial while being transported on a truck two months ago. Read The Full Story

Parrot partners with senseFly and Pix4D on mapping UAVs

, Jul 27th 2012 Discuss [0]

Parrot, the maker of the famous AR.Drone, has today announced two new ventures with companies chasing similar goals. The first is a $2.5 million investment with aerial mapping specialist Pix4D. That will see drones creating mapping solutions and geographical information using Pix4D's software. Pix4D will be providing the necessary imaging algorithms that helps the drones make 3D maps of the areas they fly over, while Parrot’s investment will help boost development. Read The Full Story

Drone hacking by UT researchers catches Feds off guard

, Jul 20th 2012 Discuss [0]

About a month ago, a group of researchers from the University of Texas from the UT Radionavigation Laboratory demonstrated to the military and other US officials how a hacker could completely take control of an automated drone operating within US airspace. The demonstration exposed a very serious flaw in plans to allow the civilian operation of drone aircraft within US airspace. Read The Full Story

Spy Hawk gives you an eagle eye in the sky

, Jul 13th 2012 Discuss [0]

Remote control helicopters were all the rage not too long ago, but how about an even cooler spy plane? RED5 is offering a Spy Hawk plane that has a 5-megapixel camera attached to the nose, able to beam video back to a 3.5-inch screen embedded in the remote control. The plane is capable of being controlled up to 600m away, and you can record video onto a 4GB SD card for later viewing. Read The Full Story

Seed drone Samarai swarms will dominate the skies [Video]

, Jul 4th 2012 Discuss [0]

Lockheed Martin's terrifyingly simple Samarai maple seed drone has emerged for another demonstration, promising swarms of remote surveillance small enough to be launched by hand indoors. The drone - which has just two moving parts and uses complex image stabilization processing to produce a stable video stream despite its tumbling movements - has been shrunk down along the way, with Lockheed developing a smaller, 17cm version of the 30cm original. The goal is simple: bypass expensive and vulnerable spy planes and large drones with a cloud of near-disposable Samarai. Read The Full Story

Researchers find drones vulnerable to GPS spoofing

, Jun 29th 2012 Discuss [0]

Drones continue to see large rollouts in various industries across the world, and now there’s one more thing to worry about on top of privacy issues and potential death from above. A team at the University of Texas has managed to find a vulnerability in drones that allows an attacker to gain control of the unmanned vehicle and change its course. Professor Todd Humphreys and the team spoof GPS receivers in order to take control of the drones. Read The Full Story

Cheap onboard tracking system tested on UAV

, May 29th 2012 Discuss [0]

More and more uses for drones and UAVs seem to be cropping up, but there are limitations. The Department of Defense in coordination with the University of North Dakota has developed a UAV that is capable of recognising specific objects on the ground and tracking them accordingly. Traditionally this was a hard exercise, requiring large computation powers, but the duo have come up with an imaging processing machine that’s light enough to be installed on the UAV itself. Read The Full Story

Sensor enables 3D imaging for drones

, May 10th 2012 Discuss [0]

We’ve seen some interesting uses for drones before, but there are potential problems if you’re using large groups in close proximity. Collisions can potentially occurs, especially in areas with interference. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Duisburg have developed a CMOS sensor designed to combat collisions by measuring three dimensional spaces. Each pixel is not only given a grey value, but also a distance value. Read The Full Story

US drones “accidental” surveillance can be kept for 90 days

, May 9th 2012 Discuss [0]

Officially, the United States does not use its significant fleet of unmanned drones for surveillance on US soil. But a clause in the Air Force's policy on accidentally collected surveillance is raising eyebrows. According to the guidelines given to operators, photos and video of US citizens taken without their consent can be kept for up to 90 days, in which it will be analyzed to determine whether or not it can be kept under current domestic spying laws. Read The Full Story

Micro helicopters ditch GPS and remote controls

, Apr 24th 2012 Discuss [0]

While more and more drones are finding their way into the hands of enthusiasts and being developed for different applications (including scary ones), researchers have developed a self-flying robot that can navigate using only an on-board camera and a small computer. They don’t need to be controlled via remote control, or require GPS, so once you program them with the necessary instructions, they can get from point A to B by themselves. Read The Full Story

File sharing drones are already a reality

, Mar 21st 2012 Discuss [4]

When we first heard that The Pirate Bay were planning to host the torrent magnet site in the sky via wireless drones, we were more than a little skeptical. As it turns out, the technology is certainly possible. TorrentFreak reports on Project “Electronic Countermeasures”, which has built five fully functioning drones capable of node sharing similar to what The Pirate Bay had in mind. Read The Full Story

Roads? The Back to the Future drone doesn’t need roads

, Mar 12th 2012 Discuss [0]

The AR.Drone is a nifty piece of kit, and as we saw the other day, there are some interesting and unique possibilities in how to control it. Drones also figure prominently into law enforcement, but our only complaint is that they all look a bit boring. If only someone came along and spruced up the exterior to be a little bit more entertaining. Read The Full Story
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