
Drone Racing at the Highest Level With Deep Reinforcement Learning
Credit: Nature An autonomous drone has competed against human drone-racing champions — and won. The victory can be attributed to savvy engineering and a type of artificial intelligence that learns mostly through trial and error.“ Physical sports are more challenging...
A New Playbook To Stop Monster Wildfires Using Drones, AI, And 3D Training
Credit: NDTV.comAs the earth continues to warm, more nations are experiencing wildfires. last year has seen fires in Turkey, Greece, and Spain, while a wildfire in Hawaii last month claimed at least 115 lives and completely destroyed the town of Lahaina. A...
Drones that Capture Carbon are a Tool for Predicting Eruptions
Credit: Wired.com In the future, remote-controlled quadcopters might mean that researchers won’t have to crawl inside volcanoes to collect carbon dioxide anymore. EVERY TIME FIONA D’Arcy descends into a volcano—she’s visited 34 so far—the experience is unique. There...
Is THIS the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO Pilots are Seeing?
Credit: Daily Mail Undefined Technologies' claim that its ion-propelled eVTOL drone generates 150 percent more thrust than rivals. The company hopes to demonstrate a 15-minute flight with noise levels below 70dB this year - ion drives are widely used in satellites and...
Chinese Researchers are Looking at Ways to use Drones Without GPS to hit Targets
Credit: Defenseone.com A recent academic paper out of China proposes a new method for controlling drones and steering them to targets in environments where GPS is under attack, a new sign of the growing importance of drones in conflicts where adversaries have advanced...
What is a “Toroidal Propeller,” and How May it Affect Drone Technology in the Future? An Expert Clarifies
Credit: MIT The basic configuration of traditional propellers has not fundamentally changed since the first powered flight by the Wright brothers in 1903. However, as engineers learn more about aerodynamics and attempt new experiments, propellers are evolving to more...
Watch a Swarm of Autonomous Drones Manoeuvre Through a Dense Bamboo Grove with Finesse
Credit: Freethink.com Researchers from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Zhejiang University have created a novel method that enables drone swarms to fly in congested skies. Ten of their robots slice through bamboo thickets in a scenario right...