The US Air Force has awarded Exosonic a contract to develop a supersonic combat drone concept. The demonstrator vehicle will be used to demonstrate the technologies behind the quiet supersonic concept and to train pilots. The project will, among other things, help the USAF train its fighter pilots for potential future encounters with "near-peer adversaries."
With drones increasingly utilized as common warfare and surveillance technologies, a number of government contractors and agencies have funded projects that look into new ways to knock the aerial vehicles out of the sky. The latest among them is BAE Systems, which has tested a modified rocket featuring a laser guidance system to shoot down drones without the cost of existing missile options.
The use of drones for aerial photography had definitely picked up in recent years, especially last year when restrictions made it more difficult to be in proximity with other humans. In other words, it's the perfect time for drone giant DJI to make a big splash and finally upgrade its Mavic line. The DJI Mavic 3 Pro has, of course, been leaked before, but new details have just landed that almost complete the picture, including the price you'll pay for those new features.
DJI might be retiring its Mavic name, but that doesn't mean the line is going extinct. True, it has been three years since a "main" Mavic drone was launched, but DJI did launch a few drones in the meantime. Fans of the drone maker will probably be relieved to hear that a new product is just around the corner. And if this rather hefty leak is to be believed, the DJI Mavic 3 or DJI Pro 3 will be packing quite a punch when it comes to its specs.
Wing is a drone company that uses flying drones to deliver packages. The company has announced that September will mark its second anniversary operating in Logan, Australia. Logan is a small town most people outside of Australia have likely never heard of that is a neighbor of Brisbane and home to about 300,000 people.
T-Mobile has teamed up with The Drone Racing League to launch a magenta-colored 5G racing drone. According to the Uncarrier, its new drone is one of the first racing models to feature 5G connectivity, enabling it to stream live video to the Internet. The drone will be leveraged as a tool to shoot unique perspectives during live events, with the MLB first in the pipeline.
Drone racing is a relatively new sport, with drones racing around a track with obstacles the drones are required to avoid as quickly as possible. While drone racing is purely for fun, the technology behind avoiding obstacles in these races can also allow drones to avoid obstacles when they're being used for critical and time-sensitive operations such as search and rescue. MIT is trying to make drones capable of flying faster while avoiding obstacles in their way.
Commercial drones today come in a wide range of sizes and prices, but the ones that carry popular names often also carry heavy price tags. DJI has, of course, been trying to offer affordable options, and it might have finally hit that mark. It rather silently launched the new DJI Mini SE that distills the core experiences consumers might be looking for in a decent commercial drone and slaps a rather tempting price tag to make it easier to get started.
Using the portable simulator E-2D from Northrup Grumman, Boeing and a team of experts demonstrated the manned-unmanned use of a drone to refill a fighter jet while in the sky. The effort involved "virtual carrier air wing teaming scenarios," according to Boeing, including the F/A-18 Super Hornet and the US Navy's MQ-255 Stingray unmanned aerial refueler.
Amazon Prime Air may have promised a zippy world of drone deliveries, but the retail behemoth is grounding the fleet in at least one country according to a new report. Announced in 2016, Prime Air was billed as the next generation of super-timely delivery options, bypassing roads in favor of flying directly to shoppers with smaller, urgent items.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a region that's home to hot temperatures and three deserts, has experienced heavy rainfall in multiple places over recent hours due to deliberate manipulation of the weather. The effort involved drones and a technology called cloud seeding, which disperses substances in the air that alter clouds' properties, increasing the likelihood of rain.
Many use their smartphones to capture anything anywhere, sometimes even in difficult or dangerous locations and positions. One thing our powerful smartphones will never be able to do is to take aerial photos, at least not without some help from a drone or any other flying contraption. Never say never, as they say, and Vivo seems to be thinking of something to solve that problem. Its latest patent shows a smartphone that houses an honest-to-goodness quadcopter drone to take pictures from above, almost like in the movies.