By Peter Rüegg

Ecologists are increasingly using traces of genetic material left behind by living organisms left behind in the environment, called environmental DNA (eDNA), to catalogue and monitor biodiversity. Based on these DNA traces, researchers can determine which species are present in a certain area.

Obtaining samples from water or soil is easy, but other habitats – such as the forest canopy – are difficult for researchers to access. As a result, many species remain untracked in poorly explored areas.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, and the company SPYGEN have partnered to develop a special drone that can autonomously collect samples on tree branches.

(Video: ETH Zürich)

How the drone collects material

The drone is equipped with adhesive strips. When the aircraft lands on a branch, material from the branch sticks to these strips. Researchers can then extract DNA in the lab, analyse it and assign it to genetic matches of the various organisms using database comparisons.

But not all branches are the same: they vary in terms of their thickness and elasticity. Branches also bend and rebound when a drone lands on them. Programming the aircraft in such a way that it can still approach a branch autonomously and remain stable on it long enough to take samples was a major challenge for the roboticists.

“Landing on branches requires complex control,” explains Stefano Mintchev, Professor of Environmental Robotics at ETH Zurich and WSL. Initially, the drone does not know how flexible a branch is, so the researchers fitted it with a force sensing cage. This allows the drone to measure this factor at the scene and incorporate it into its flight manoeuvre.

Scheme: DNA is extracted from the collected branch material, amplified, sequenced and the sequences found are compared with databases. This allows the species to be identified. (Graphic: Stefano Mintchev / ETH Zürich)

Preparing rainforest operations at Zoo Zurich

Researchers have tested their new device on seven tree species. In the samples, they found DNA from 21 distinct groups of organisms, or taxa, including birds, mammals and insects. “This is encouraging, because it shows that the collection technique works,“ says Mintchev, who co-​authored the study that has appeared in the journal Science Robotics.

The researchers now want to improve their drone further to get it ready for a competition in which the aim is to detect as many different species as possible across 100 hectares of rainforest in Singapore in 24 hours.

To test the drone’s efficiency under conditions similar to those it will experience at the competition, Mintchev and his team are currently working at the Zoo Zurich’s Masoala Rainforest. “Here we have the advantage of knowing which species are present, which will help us to better assess how thorough we are in capturing all eDNA traces with this technique or if we’re missing something,“ Mintchev says.

For this event, however, the collection device must become more efficient and mobilize faster. In the tests in Switzerland, the drone collected material from seven trees in three days; in Singapore, it must be able to fly to and collect samples from ten times as many trees in just one day.

Collecting samples in a natural rainforest, however, presents the researchers with even tougher challenges. Frequent rain washes eDNA off surfaces, while wind and clouds impede drone operation. “We are therefore very curious to see whether our sampling method will also prove itself under extreme conditions in the tropics,” Mintchev says.

• PAPER – Drone-​assisted collection of environmental DNA from tree branches for biodiversity monitoring. Aucone E, Kirchgeorg E, Valentini A, Pellissier L, Deiner K, and Mintchev S. Science Robotics, 18 January 2023. DOI 10.1126/scirobotics.add5762

Scientists have developed a theory that can explain how flying insects determine the gravity direction without using accelerometers. It also forms a substantial step in the creation of tiny, autonomous drones.

Scientists have discovered a novel manner for flying drones and insects to estimate the gravity direction. Whereas drones typically use accelerometers to this end, the way in which flying insects do this has until now been shrouded in mystery, since they lack a specific sense for acceleration. In an article published in Nature, scientists from TU Delft and Aix Marseille Université / CNRS in France have shown that drones can estimate the gravity direction by combining visual motion sensing with a model of how they move. The study is a great example of the synergy between technology and biology.

On the one hand, the new approach is an important step for the creation of autonomous tiny, insect-sized drones, since it requires fewer sensors. On the other hand, it forms a hypothesis for how insects control their attitude, as the theory forms a parsimonious explanation of multiple phenomena observed in biology.

The importance of finding the gravity direction

Successful flight requires knowing the direction of gravity. As ground-bound animals, we humans typically have no trouble determining which way is down. However, this becomes more difficult when flying. Indeed, the passengers in an airplane are normally not aware of the plane being slightly tilted sideways in the air to make a wide circle. When humans started to take the skies, pilots relied purely on visually detecting the horizon line for determining the plane’s “attitude”, that is, its body orientation with respect to gravity. However, when flying through clouds the horizon line is no longer visible, which can lead to an increasingly wrong impression of what is up and down – with potentially disastrous consequences.

Also drones and flying insects need to control their attitude. Drones typically use accelerometers for determining the gravity direction. However, in flying insects no sensing organ for measuring accelerations has been found. Hence, for insects it is currently still a mystery how they estimate attitude, and some even question whether they estimate attitude at all.

Optic flow suffices for finding attitude

Although it is unknown how flying insects estimate and control their attitude, it is very well known that they visually observe motion by means of “optic flow”. Optic flow captures the relative motion between an observer and its environment. For example, when sitting in a train, trees close by seem to move very fast (have a large optic flow), while mountains in the distance seem to move very slowly (have a small optic flow).

“Optic flow itself carries no information on attitude. However, we found out that combining optic flow with a motion model allows to retrieve the gravity direction.”, says Guido de Croon, full professor of bio-inspired micro air vehicles at TU Delft, “Having a motion model means that a robot or animal can predict how it will move when taking actions. For example, drones can predict what will happen when they spin their two right propellers faster than their left propellers. Since a drone’s attitude determines in which direction it accelerates, and this direction can be picked up by changes in optic flow, the combination allows a drone to determine its attitude.”

The theoretical analysis in the article shows that finding the gravity direction with optic flow works almost under any condition, except for specific cases such as when the observer is completely still. “Whereas engineers would find such an observability problem unacceptable, we hypothesise that nature has simply accepted it”, says Guido de Croon. “In the article we provide a theoretical proof that despite this problem, an attitude controller will still work around hover at the cost of slight oscillations – reminiscent of the more erratic flight behaviour of flying insects.”

Implications for robotics

The researchers confirmed the theory’s validity with robotic implementations, demonstrating its promise for the field of robotics. De Croon: “Tiny flapping wing drones can be useful for tasks like search-and-rescue or pollination. Designing such drones means dealing with a major challenge that nature also had to face; how to achieve a fully autonomous system subject to extreme payload restrictions. This makes even tiny accelerometers a considerable burden. Our proposed theory will contribute to the design of tiny drones by allowing for a smaller sensor suite.”

Biological insights

The proposed theory has the potential to give insight into various biological phenomena. “It was known that optic flow played a role in attitude control, but until now the precise mechanism for this was unclear.”, explains Franck Ruffier, bio-roboticist and director of research at Aixe Marseille Université / CNRS, “The proposed theory can explain how flying insects succeed in estimating and controlling their attitude even in difficult, cluttered environments where the horizon line is not visible. It also provides insight into other phenomena, for example, why locusts fly less well when their ocelli (eyes on the top of their heads) are occluded.”

”We expect that novel biological experiments, specifically designed for testing our theory will be necessary for verifying the use of the proposed mechanism in insects”, adds Franck Ruffier.

Click here for the original publication in Nature. The scientific article shows how the synergy between robotics and biology can lead to technological advances and novel avenues for biological research.

The post Big step towards tiny autonomous drones appeared first on RoboHouse.

• PAPER – Accommodating unobservability to control flight attitude with optic flow. G.C.H.E. de Croon, J.J.G. Dupeyroux, C. De Wagter, A. Chatterjee, D.A. Olejnik, and F. Ruffier. Nature 610, 485–490 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05182-2

Uncrewed aircraft in the sky above the headquarters of the Port of Antwerp-Bruges. © Helicus – Geert Vanhandenhove, Rik Van Boxem, 2022

By Gareth Willmer

In a city in the future, a fire breaks out in a skyscraper. An alarm is triggered and a swarm of drones swoops in, surrounds the building and uses antennas to locate people inside, enabling firefighters to go straight to the stricken individuals. Just in the nick of time – no deaths are recorded.

Elsewhere in the city, drones fly back and forth delivering tissue samples from hospitals to specialist labs for analysis, while another rushes a defibrillator to someone who has suffered a suspected cardiac arrest on a football pitch. The patient lives, with the saved minutes proving critical.

At the time of writing, drones have already been used in search-and-rescue situations to save more than 880 people worldwide, according to drone company DJI. Drones are also being used for medical purposes, such as to transport medicines and samples, and take vaccines to remote areas.

Drones for such uses are still a relatively new development, meaning there is plenty of room to make them more effective and improve supporting infrastructure. This is particularly true when it comes to urban environments, where navigation is complex and requires safety regulations.

Flying firefighters

The IDEAL DRONE project developed a system to aid in firefighting and other emergencies to demonstrate the potential for using swarms of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) in such situations. Equipped with antennas, the drones use a radio-frequency system to detect the location of ‘nodes’ – or tags – worn by people inside a building.

“By knowing how many people are inside the building and where they are located, it will optimise the search-and-rescue operation.”

– Prof Gian Paolo Cimellaro, IDEAL DRONE

Making use of an Italian aircraft hangar, the tests involved pilots on the ground flying three drones around the outside of a building. The idea is that the drones triangulate the position of people inside where their signals intersect, as well as detecting information about their health condition. The details can then be mapped to optimise and accelerate rescue operations, and enhance safety for firefighters by allowing them to avoid searching all over a burning building without knowing where people are.

‘You create a sort of temporary network from outside the building through which you can detect the people inside,’ said Professor Gian Paolo Cimellaro, an engineer at the Polytechnic University of Turin and project lead on IDEAL DRONE.

‘By knowing how many people are inside the building and where they are located, it will optimise the search-and-rescue operation.’

He added: ‘A unique characteristic of this project is that it allows indoor tracking without communication networks such as Wi-Fi or GPS, which might not be available if you are in an emergency like a disaster or post-earthquake situation.’

There are some challenges in terms of accuracy and battery life, while another obvious drawback is that people in the building need to already be wearing trackers.

However, said Prof Cimellaro, current thinking is that this can be unintrusive if tags are incorporated in existing technology that people often already carry such as smartwatches, mobile phones or ID cards. They can also be used by organisations that mandate their use for staff working in hazardous environments, such as factories or offshore oil rigs.

Looking beyond the challenges, Prof Cimellaro thinks such systems could be a reality within five years, with drones holding significant future promise for avoiding ‘putting human lives in danger’.

Medical networks

Another area in which drones can be used to save lives is medical emergencies. This is the focus of the SAFIR-Med project.

Belgian medical drone operator Helicus has established a command-and-control (C2C) centre in Antwerp to coordinate drone flights. The idea is that the C2C automatically creates flight plans using artificial intelligence, navigating within a digital twin – or virtual representation – of the real world. These plans are then relayed to the relevant air traffic authorities for flight authorisation.

‘We foresee drone cargo ports on the rooftops of hospitals, integrated as much as possible with the hospital’s logistical system so that transport can be on demand,’ added Geert Vanhandenhove, manager of flight operations at Helicus.

So far, SAFIR-Med has successfully carried out remote virtual demonstrations, simulations, flights controlled from the C2C at test sites, and other tests such as that of a ‘detect-and-avoid’ system to help drones take evasive action when others are flying in the vicinity.

The next step will be to validate the concepts in real-life demonstrations in several countries, including Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. The trials envisage scenarios including transfers of medical equipment and tissue samples between hospitals and labs, delivery of a defibrillator to treat a cardiac patient outside a hospital, and transport of a physician to an emergency site by passenger drone.

“We foresee drone cargo ports on the rooftops of hospitals.”

– Geert Vanhandenhove, SAFIR-Med

Additional simulations in Greece and the Czech Republic will show the potential for extending such systems across Europe.

SAFIR-Med is part of a wider initiative known as U-space. It’s co-funded by the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) Joint Undertaking which is a public-private effort for safer drone operations under the Digital European Sky.

Making rules

Much of the technology is already there for such uses of drones, says Vanhandenhove. However, he highlights that there are regulatory challenges involved in drone flights in cities, especially with larger models flying beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). This includes authorisations for demonstrations within SAFIR-Med itself.

‘The fact that this is the first time this is being done is posing significant hurdles,’ he said. ‘It will depend on the authorisations granted as to which scenarios can be executed.’

But regulations are set to open up over time, with European Commission rules facilitating a framework for use of BVLOS UAVs in low-level airspace due to come into force next January.

Vanhandenhove emphasises that the development of more robust drone infrastructure will be a gradual process of learning and improvement. Eventually, he hopes that through well-coordinated systems with authorities, emergency flights can be mobilised in seconds in smart cities of the future. ‘For us, it’s very important that we can get an authorisation in sub-minute time,’ he said.

He believes commercial flights could even begin within a couple of years, though it may not be until post-2025 that widely integrated, robust uncrewed medical systems come into play in cities. ‘It’s about making the logistics of delivering whatever medical treatment faster and more efficient, and taking out as much as possible the constraints and limitations that we have on the route,’ said Vanhandenhove.

Research in this article was funded via the EU’s European Research Council.

This article was originally published in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine.

At ICRA 2022, the researchers weren’t the only ones working with cutting-edge technology. We spoke to the exhibitors to get real-life demos of their products.

Tangram Vision

Tangram Vision is a hardware-agnostic sensor fusion platform. It streamlines the development and deployment of critical sensor infrastructure like calibration, fusion, and monitoring for any number of cameras, depth sensors, LiDAR, radar, and IMU. Their co-founder, Adam Rodnitzky, walks us through their sensor fusion platform.

FLX Solutions

Matt Bilsky, Founder and CEO of FLX Solutions gives us a live demo of their robot, the FLX BOT. Matt Bilsky applied his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering to create a novel, highly compact robot that is designed to reach and inspect parts of a building that a human cannot reach. The FLX BOT is one inch in diameter and is made of modular links that can be attached one after the other to extend the reach and degrees of freedom of the robot.

Exyn Technologies

Exyn Technologies specializes in aerial robotics, drone swarms, multi-modal sensor fusion, 3D mapping, obstacle avoidance, and autonomous navigation & planning.

Exyn’s focus is on developing software for aerial robots so they can operate in GPS-denied environments, without human control, prior information, or pre-existing infrastructure (e.g. no motion capture system).

Pollen Robotics

Pollen Robotics developed the robot, Reachy, an open-source humanoid robot with a quirky appearance. Reachy’s primary userbase is researchers studying fields such as teleoperation. Using mixed autonomy, Reachy is able to be teleoperated by humans, while still having onboard intelligence to autonomously infer the actions you want it to do.

Dr. Sihao Sun discusses his award-winning research in the area of controlling the flight of a drone when faced with a sudden rotor failure.

Typical research in this area addressed the case where one of the four rotors in a quadrotor suddenly, spontaneously stops working. This previous research does not take into full account real-life scenarios where rotor failure is common. This includes collisions with other drones, walls, birds, and operating in degraded GPS environments.

Dr. Sihao Sun

Dr. Sihao Sun is a postdoctoral research assistant at the Robotics and Perception Group (RPG) in University of Zurich directed by Prof. Davide Scaramuzza. Currently, he is working on control and perception for aerial robots (drones).

In December 2020, he received his PhD degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Control and Simulation Group of Delft University of Technology. His works on quadrotor fault-tolerant flight control have been featured by reputable media, such as IEEE Spectrum.

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Sebastian Scherer from CMU’s Airlab gives us a behind-the-scenes demo at ICRA of their Autonomous Flight Control AI. Their approach aims to cooperate with human pilots and act the way they would.

The team took this approach to create a more natural, less intrusive process for co-habiting human and AI pilots at a single airport. They describe it as a Turing Test, where ideally the human pilot will be unable to distinguish an AI from a person operating the plane.

Their communication system works parallel with a 6-camera hardware package based on the Nvidia AGX Dev Kit. This kit measures the angular speed of objects flying across the videos.

In this world, high angular velocity means low risk — since the object is flying at a fast speed perpendicular to the camera plane.

Low angular velocity indicates high risk since the object could be flying directly at the plane, headed for a collision.

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Front view of the flying robot. Image credit: Dr Tim Helps

This new advance, published in the journal Science Robotics, could pave the way for smaller, lighter and more effective micro flying robots for environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and deployment in hazardous environments.

Until now, typical micro flying robots have used motors, gears and other complex transmission systems to achieve the up-and-down motion of the wings. This has added complexity, weight and undesired dynamic effects.

Taking inspiration from bees and other flying insects, researchers from Bristol’s Faculty of Engineering, led by Professor of Robotics Jonathan Rossiter, have successfully demonstrated a direct-drive artificial muscle system, called the Liquid-amplified Zipping Actuator (LAZA), that achieves wing motion using no rotating parts or gears.

The LAZA system greatly simplifies the flapping mechanism, enabling future miniaturization of flapping robots down to the size of insects.

In the paper, the team show how a pair of LAZA-powered flapping wings can provide more power compared with insect muscle of the same weight, enough to fly a robot across a room at 18 body lengths per second.

They also demonstrated how the LAZA can deliver consistent flapping over more than one million cycles, important for making flapping robots that can undertake long-haul flights.

The team expect the LAZA to be adopted as a fundamental building block for a range of autonomous insect-like flying robots.

Dr Tim Helps, lead author and developer of the LAZA system said: “With the LAZA, we apply electrostatic forces directly on the wing, rather than through a complex, inefficient transmission system. This leads to better performance, simpler design, and will unlock a new class of low-cost, lightweight flapping micro-air vehicles for future applications, like autonomous inspection of off-shore wind turbines.”

Professor Rossiter added: “Making smaller and better performing flapping wing micro robots is a huge challenge. LAZA is an important step toward autonomous flying robots that could be as small as insects and perform environmentally critical tasks such as plant pollination and exciting emerging roles such as finding people in collapsed buildings.”

• PAPER – Liquid-amplified zipping actuators for micro-air vehicles with transmission-free flapping. T. Helps, C. Romero, M. Taghavi, A. Conn and J. Rossiter. Science Robotics, vol. 7 (63)

When it comes to exploring complex and unknown environments such as forests, buildings or caves, drones are hard to beat. They are fast, agile and small, and they can carry sensors and payloads virtually everywhere. However, autonomous drones can hardly find their way through an unknown environment without a map. For the moment, expert human pilots are needed to release the full potential of drones.

“To master autonomous agile flight, you need to understand the environment in a split second to fly the drone along collision-free paths,” says Davide Scaramuzza, who leads the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich and the NCCR Robotics Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge. “This is very difficult both for humans and for machines. Expert human pilots can reach this level after years of perseverance and training. But machines still struggle.”

The AI algorithm learns to fly in the real world from a simulated expert

In a new study, Scaramuzza and his team have trained an autonomous quadrotor to fly through previously unseen environments such as forests, buildings, ruins and trains, keeping speeds of up to 40 km/h and without crashing into trees, walls or other obstacles. All this was achieved relying only on the quadrotor’s on-board cameras and computation.

The drone’s neural network learned to fly by watching a sort of “simulated expert” – an algorithm that flew a computer-generated drone through a simulated environment full of complex obstacles. At all times, the algorithm had complete information on the state of the quadrotor and readings from its sensors, and could rely on enough time and computational power to always find the best trajectory.

Such a “simulated expert” could not be used outside of simulation, but its data were used to teach the neural network how to predict the best trajectory based only on the data from the sensors. This is a considerable advantage over existing systems, which first use sensor data to create a map of the environment and then plan trajectories within the map – two steps that require time and make it impossible to fly at high-speeds.

No exact replica of the real world needed

After being trained in simulation, the system was tested in the real world, where it was able to fly in a variety of environments without collisions at speeds of up to 40 km/h. “While humans require years to train, the AI, leveraging high-performance simulators, can reach comparable navigation abilities much faster, basically overnight,” says Antonio Loquercio, a PhD student and co-author of the paper. “Interestingly these simulators do not need to be an exact replica of the real world. If using the right approach, even simplistic simulators are sufficient,” adds Elia Kaufmann, another PhD student and co-author.

The applications are not limited to quadrotors. The researchers explain that the same approach could be useful for improving the performance of autonomous cars, or could even open the door to a new way of training AI systems for operations in domains where collecting data is difficult or impossible, for example on other planets.

According to the researchers, the next steps will be to make the drone improve from experience, as well as to develop faster sensors that can provide more information about the environment in a smaller amount of time – thus allowing drones to fly safely even at speeds above 40 km/h.

Literature

• Learning High-speed Flight in the Wild. Antonio Loquercio, Elia Kaufmann, René Ranftl, Matthias Müller, Vladlen Koltun and Davide Scaramuzza. Science Robotics, October 6, 2021. DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.abg5810

An open-source version of the paper can be found here.

Media contacts

Prof. Dr. Davide Scaramuzza – Robotics and Perception Group
Department of Informatics
University of Zurich
Phone +41 44 635 24 09
E-mail: sdavide@ifi.uzh.ch

Antonio Loquercio – Robotics and Perception Group
Department of Informatics
University of Zurich
Phone +41 44 635 43 73
E-mail: loquercio@ifi.uzh.ch

Elia Kaufmann – Robotics and Perception Group
Institut für Informatik
Universität Zürich
Tel. +41 44 635 43 73
E-Mail: ekaufmann@ifi.uzh.ch

Media Relations University of Zurich
Phone +41 44 634 44 67
E-mail: mediarelations@kommunikation.uzh.ch

To be useful, drones need to be quick. Because of their limited battery life they must complete whatever task they have – searching for survivors on a disaster site, inspecting a building, delivering cargo – in the shortest possible time. And they may have to do it by going through a series of waypoints like windows, rooms, or specific locations to inspect, adopting the best trajectory and the right acceleration or deceleration at each segment.

Algorithm outperforms professional pilots

The best human drone pilots are very good at doing this and have so far always outperformed autonomous systems in drone racing. Now, a research group at the University of Zurich (UZH) has created an algorithm that can find the quickest trajectory to guide a quadrotor – a drone with four propellers – through a series of waypoints on a circuit. “Our drone beat the fastest lap of two world-class human pilots on an experimental race track”, says Davide Scaramuzza, who heads the Robotics and Perception Group at UZH and the Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge of the NCCR Robotics, which funded the research.

“The novelty of the algorithm is that it is the first to generate time-optimal trajectories that fully consider the drones’ limitations”, says Scaramuzza. Previous works relied on simplifications of either the quadrotor system or the description of the flight path, and thus they were sub-optimal. “The key idea is, rather than assigning sections of the flight path to specific waypoints, that our algorithm just tells the drone to pass through all waypoints, but not how or when to do that”, adds Philipp Foehn, PhD student and first author of the paper in Science Robotics.

External cameras provide position information in real-time

The researchers had the algorithm and two human pilots fly the same quadrotor through a race circuit. They employed external cameras to precisely capture the motion of the drones and – in the case of the autonomous drone – to give real-time information to the algorithm on where the drone was at any moment. To ensure a fair comparison, the human pilots were given the opportunity to train on the circuit before the race. But the algorithm won: all its laps were faster than the human ones, and the performance was more consistent. This is not surprising, because once the algorithm has found the best trajectory it can reproduce it faithfully many times, unlike human pilots.

Before commercial applications, the algorithm will need to become less computationally demanding, as it now takes up to an hour for the computer to calculate the time-optimal trajectory for the drone. Also, at the moment, the drone relies on external cameras to compute where it was at any moment. In future work, the scientists want to use onboard cameras. But the demonstration that an autonomous drone can in principle fly faster than human pilots is promising. “This algorithm can have huge applications in package delivery with drones, inspection, search and rescue, and more”, says Scaramuzza.

Literature

Philipp Foehn, Angel Romero, Davide Scaramuzza. “Time-Optimal Planning for Quadrotor Waypoint Flight”. Science Robotics. July 21, 2021. DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.abh1221

From a software perspective, it is really challenging to come up with an algorithm capable of autonomous and collaborative navigation within such tight resource constraints. State-of-the-art solutions like Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) require too much memory and processing power. A promising line of work is to use bug algorithms [2], which can be implemented as computationally efficient finite state machines (FSMs), and can navigate around obstacles without requiring a map.

A downside of using FSMs is that the resulting behavior can be very sensitive to their hyperparameters, and therefore may not generalize outside of the tested environments. This is especially true for the problem of gas source localization (GSL), as wind conditions and obstacle configurations drastically change the problem. In this article, we show how we tackled the complex problem of swarm GSL in cluttered environments by using a simple bug algorithm with evolved parameters, and then tested it onboard a fully autonomous swarm of tiny drones. We will focus on the problems that were encountered along the way, and the design choices we made as a result. At the end of this post, we will also add a short discussion about the future of tiny drones.

Why gas source localization?

Overall we are interested in finding novel ways to enable autonomy on constrained devices, like tiny drones. Two years ago, we showed that a swarm of tiny drones was able to explore unknown, cluttered environments and come back to the base station. Since then, we have been working on an even more complex task: using such a swarm for Gas Source Localization (GSL).

There has been a lot of research focussing on autonomous GSL in robotics, since it is an important but very hard problem [3]. The difficulty of the task comes from the complexity of how odor can spread in an environment. In an empty room without wind, a gas will slowly diffuse from the source. This allows a robot to find the source by simply moving in the direction that makes the gas concentration go up, just like small bacteria like E. Coli do to find nutrients. However, if the environment becomes larger with many obstacles and walls, and wind comes into play, the spreading of gas is much less regular. Large parts of the environment may have no gas or wind at all, while at the same time there may be pockets of gas away from the source. Moreover, chemical sensors for robots are much less capable than the smelling organs of animals. Available chemical sensors for robots are typically less sensitive, noisier, and much slower.

Due to these difficulties, most work in the GSL field has focused on a single robot that has to find a gas source in environments that are relatively small and without obstacles. Relatively recently, there have been studies in which groups of robots solve this task in a collaborative fashion, for example with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). PSO was first invented as a way to model the social behavior of foraging birds, in which the birds communicate with each other how good the food at their location is. The birds then follow a direction that is determined both by their own observations and the best observed location of the swarm. PSO turned out to be a great optimization algorithm for many different real-world problems. Thanks to the different particles in the swarm, it can escape local optima. In the case of GSL, PSO allows a swarm of robots to collaboratively seek a gas source, while ignoring pockets of gas away from the gas source. Until now this concept has been shown in simulation [4] and on large outdoor drones equipped with LiDAR and GPS [5], but never before on tiny drones in complex, GPS-denied, indoor environments.

Required Infrastructure

In our project, we introduce a new bug algorithm, Sniffy Bug, which uses PSO for gas source localization. In order to tune the FSM of Sniffy Bug, we used an evolutionary algorithm. This type of algorithm mimics the survival of the fittest in natural evolution, but now with “fitness” defined as being able to localize a gas source as efficiently as possible. The evolution starts out with random controllers for the swarm of robots, evaluates them in simulation, and selects the fittest controllers for reproduction. Over the generations, the controllers become increasingly good at the task. After evolution, the best controller is transferred to the real robots in the swarm.

Of course, for this evolution to work well, we need a good simulation of how gas spreads in a complex, indoor environment. However, early in the project, we realized that this would be a challenge, as no end-to-end gas modeling pipeline existed yet. It is important to have an easy-to-use pipeline that does not require any aerodynamics domain knowledge, such that as many researchers as possible can generate environments to test their algorithms. It would also make it easier to compare contributions and to better understand in which conditions certain algorithms work or don’t work. The GADEN ROS package [6] is a great open source tool for modelling gas distribution when you have an environment and flow field, but for our objective, we needed a fully automated tool that could generate a great variety of random environments on-demand with just a few parameters. Below is an overview of our simulation pipeline: AutoGDM.

AutoGDM, a fully automated gas dispersion modeling (GDM) simulation pipeline.

First, we use a procedural environment generator proposed in [7] to generate random walls and obstacles inside of the environment. Then, gas dispersion modeling (GDM) is done by first modeling a 3D flow field, i.e., the direction and magnitude of wind velocity at every point in space. Next, a gas source location is chosen. Then, at the source, gas filaments are released in the flow field and randomly expanded over time. This results in a time-varying gas concentration field. The 3D flow field is heavily impacted by something referred to as “boundary conditions”: the conditions at the walls in the environment that we feed into the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver. In our case, this means for some walls we tell the CFD to force a wind velocity of 0 m/s, while for others we may tell it to model an inlet or an outlet of air, like an open window. Determining the boundary conditions is done automatically by AutoGDM.

Since a hard requirement for us was that AutoGDM needed to be free to use, we chose to use the open-source CFD tool OpenFOAM. It’s used for cutting-edge aerodynamics research, and also the tool suggested by the authors of GADEN. Without AutoGDM, using OpenFOAM isn’t trivial, as a large number of parameters that require field expertise need to be selected, resulting in a complicated process. GADEN was used to take the environment definition (CAD files) and the flow field from OpenFOAM to generate the gas concentration field over time.

After we built this pipeline, we still needed a robot simulator. Since we weren’t planning on using a camera, our main requirement was for the simulator to be efficient (preferably in 2D) so that evolutions would take relatively little time. We decided to use Swarmulator [8], a computationally efficient C++ robot simulator designed for swarming and we plugged in our gas data.

Algorithm Design

Roughly speaking, we considered two categories of algorithms for controlling the drones: 1) a neural network, and 2) an FSM that included PSO, with evolved parameters. We first evolved neural networks in simulation. One of the first experiments is shown below.

A single agent in simulation seeking a gas source using a tiny neural network.

While it worked pretty well in simple environments with few obstacles, it seemed challenging to make this work in real life with complex obstacles and multiple agents that need to collaborate. Given the time constraints of the project, we opted for evolving the FSM. This also facilitated crossing the reality gap (i.e., the difference between simulation and real-world behaviour), as the simulated evolution could build on basic behaviors that we developed and validated on the real platform, including obstacle avoidance with four tiny laser rangers, while communicating with and avoiding other drones. An additional advantage of PSO with respect to the reality gap is that it only needs gas concentration and no gradient of the gas concentration or wind direction (which many algorithms in literature use). On a real robot at this scale, estimating the gas concentration gradient or the direction of a light breeze is hard if not impossible.

Hardware

We deploy a 37.5g Bitcraze CrazyFlie nano drone that is capable of avoiding obstacles, executing velocity commands, sensing gas, and estimating the other agent’s position in its own frame. For navigation we added a down-facing optic flow sensor and four laser rangers, whereas for gas sensing we used a TGS8100 gas sensor that was used on a CrazyFlie before in previous work [9]. The sensor is lightweight and inexpensive, but accurately estimating gas concentrations can be difficult because of its size. It tends to drift and needs time to recover after a spike in concentration is observed. Another thing we noticed is that it is possible to break them, a crash can definitely destroy the sensor.

To estimate the relative position between agents, we use a Decawave Ultra-Wideband (UWB) module and communicate states, as proposed in [10]. We also use the UWB module to communicate gas information between agents and collaboratively seek the source. The complete configuration is visible below.

A 37.5 g nano quadcopter, capable of fully autonomous waypoint tracking, obstacle avoidance, relative localization, communication and gas sensing.

Evaluation in Simulation

After we optimized the parameters of our model using Swarmulator and AutoGDM, and of course trying many different versions of our algorithm, we ended up with the final Sniffy Bug algorithm. Below is a video that shows evolved Sniffy Bug evaluated in six different environments.

The red dots are an agent’s personal target waypoint, whereas the yellow dot is the best-known position for the swarm. Simulation shows that Sniffy Bug is effective at locating the gas source in randomly generated environments. The drones successfully collaborate by means of PSO.

Real Flight Testing

After observing Sniffy Bug in simulation we were optimistic, but unsure about performance in real life. First, inspired by previous works, we dispersed alcohol through the air by placing liquid alcohol into a can which was then dispersed using a computer fan.

Dispersion of liquid alcohol in flight tests.

We tested Sniffy Bug in our flight arena of size 10 x 10 meters with large obstacles that were shaped like walls and orange poles. The image below shows four flight tests of Sniffy Bug in cluttered environments, flying fully autonomously, i.e., without the help from any external infrastructure.

Time-lapse images of real-world experiments in our flight arena. Sniffy was evaluated on four distinct environments, 10 x 10 meters in size, seeking a real isopropyl alcohol source. The trajectories of the nano quadcopters are clearly visible due to their blue lights.

In the total of 24 runs we executed, we compared Sniffy Bug with manually selected and evolved parameters. The figure below shows that the evolved parameters are more efficient in locating the source as compared to the manual parameters.

Maximum recorded gas reading by the swarm, for each time step for each run.

This does not only show that our system can successfully locate a gas source in challenging environments, but it also demonstrates the usefulness of the simulation pipeline. The parameters that were learned in simulation yield a high-performance model, validating the environment generation, randomization, and gas modeling parts of our pipeline.

Conclusion and Discussion

With this work, we believe we have made an important step towards swarms of gas-seeking drones. The proposed solution has been shown to work in real flight tests with obstacles, and without any external systems to help in localization or communication. We believe this methodology can be extended to larger environments or even to 3 dimensions, since PSO is a robust, multi-dimensional heuristic search method. Moreover, we hope that AutoGDM will help the community to better compare gas seeking algorithms, and to more easily learn parameters or models in simulation, and deploy them in the real world.

To improve Sniffy Bug’s performance, adding more laser rangers will definitely help. When working with only four laser rangers you realize how little information they actually provide. If one of the rangers senses a low value, it is unclear if a slim pole or a massive wall is detected, adding inefficiency to the algorithm. Adding more laser rangers or using other sensor modalities like vision will help to avoid also more complex obstacles than walls and poles in a reliable manner.

Another interesting discussion can be held on the hardware required for real deployment. When working with 40 grams of maximum take-off weight, the sensors and actuators that can be selected are limited. For example, the low-power and lightweight flow deck works great but fails in low-light scenarios or with smoke. Future work exploring novel sensors for highly constrained nano robots could really help increase the Technological Readiness Level (TRL) of these systems.

Finally, this has been a really fun project to work on for us and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts on Sniffy Bug!

References

[1] Carrillo-Zapata D, Milner E, Hird J, et al. Mutual Shaping in Swarm Robotics: User Studies in Fire and Rescue, Storage Organization, and Bridge Inspection. Front Robot AI. 2020;7:53. Published 2020 Apr 21. doi:10.3389/frobt.2020.00053

[2] K. N. McGuire, C. De Wagter, K. Tuyls, H. J. Kappen, and G. C. H. E.de Croon, “Minimal navigation solution for a swarm of tiny flying robotsto explore an unknown environment,”Science Robotics, vol. 4, no. 35,2019.

[3] Jing T, Meng Q-H, Ishida H. Recent progress and trend of robot odor source localization. IEEJ trans electr electron eng. 2021;16(7):938-953

[4] W. Jatmiko, K. Sekiyama and T. Fukuda, “A pso-based mobile robot for odor source localization in dynamic advection-diffusion with obstacles environment: theory, simulation and measurement,” in IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 37-51, May 2007, doi: 10.1109/MCI.2007.353419.

[5] Steiner, JA, Bourne, JR, He, X, Cropek, DM, & Leang, KK. “Chemical-Source Localization Using a Swarm of Decentralized Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Urban/Suburban Environments.” Proceedings of the ASME 2019 Dynamic Systems and Control Conference. Volume 3, Park City, Utah, USA. October 8–11, 2019. V003T21A006. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/DSCC2019-9099

[6] Monroy, V. Hernandez-Bennetts, H. Fan, A. Lilienthal, andJ. Gonzalez-Jimenez, “Gaden: A 3D gas dispersion simulator for mobilerobot olfaction in realistic environments,”MDPI Sensors, vol. 17, no.7: 1479, pp. 1–16, 2017.

[7] K. McGuire, G. de Croon, and K. Tuyls, “A comparative study of bug algorithms for robot navigation,”Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol.121, p. 103261, 2019.

[8] https://github.com/coppolam/swarmulator

[9] J. Burgues, V. Hern ́andez, A. J. Lilienthal, and S. Marco, “Smelling nano aerial vehicle for gas source localization and mapping, ”Sensors(Switzerland), vol. 19, no. 3, 2019.

[10] S. Li, M. Coppola, C. D. Wagter, and G. C. H. E. de Croon, “An autonomous swarm of micro flying robots with range-based relative localization,” Arxiv, 2020.

Links

ArXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05490

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj_SBSpK5qg

Code: https://github.com/tudelft/sniffy-bug

Please reach out if you have any questions or ideas, you can reach us at: b.p.duisterhof@gmail.com or g.c.h.e.decroon@tudelft.nl

Abate talks to Maxime Gariel, CTO of Xwing about the autonomous flight technology they are developing.

At Xwing, they are converting traditional aircraft into remotely operated aircraft. They do this by retrofitting planes with multiple sensors including cameras, radar, and lidar, and by developing sensor fusion algorithms to allow their planes to understand the world around them, using highly accurate perception algorithms.

Xwing’s autonomous flight technology allows a plane to taxi in the airport, takeoff, fly to a destination, avoid airborne and ground threats, and land, all without any human input. This technology not only enables autonomous flight but may also enhance the safety of manned aircraft by improving a plane’s ability to understand its surroundings.

Maxime Gariel

Maxime Gariel is the CTO of Xwing, a San Francisco based startup whose mission is to dramatically increase human mobility using fully autonomous aerial vehicles. Xwing is developing a Detect-And-Avoid system for unmanned and remotely piloted vehicles. Maxime is a pilot but he is passionate about making airplanes fly themselves.

Maxime joined Xwing from Rockwell Collins where he was a Principal GNC Engineer. He worked on autonomous aircraft projects including DARPA Gremlins and the AgustaWestland SW4 Solo autonomous helicopter. Before becoming Chief Engineer of the SW4 Solo’s flight control system, he was in charge of the system architecture, redundancy, and safety for the project.

Before Rockwell Collins, he worked on ADS-B based conflict detection as a postdoc at MIT and on autoland systems for airliners at Thales. Maxime earned his MS and PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech and his BS from ISAE-Supaéro (France).

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Texas A&M’s Robin Murphy has deployed robots at 29 disasters, including three building collapses, two mine disasters and an earthquake as director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue. She has also served as a technical search specialist with the Hillsboro County (Florida) Fire and Rescue Department. The Conversation talked to Murphy to provide readers an understanding of the types of technologies that search and rescue crews at the Champlain Towers South disaster site in Surfside, Florida, have at their disposal, as well as some they don’t. The interview has been edited for length.

What types of technologies are rescuers using at the Surfside condo collapse site?

We don’t have reports about it from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, but news coverage shows that they’re using drones.

A standard kit for a technical search specialist would be basically a backpack of tools for searching the interior of the rubble: listening devices and a camera-on-a-wand or borescope for looking into the rubble.

How are drones typically used to help searchers?

They’re used to get a view from above to map the disaster and help plan the search, answering questions like: What does the site look like? Where is everybody? Oh crap, there’s smoke. Where is it coming from? Can we figure out what that part of the rubble looks like?

In Surfside, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were also flying up to look at those balconies that are still intact and the parts that are hanging over. A structural specialist with binoculars generally can’t see accurately above three stories. So they don’t have a lot of ability to determine if a building’s safe for people to be near, to be working around or in, by looking from the ground.

Drones can take a series of photos to generate orthomosaics. Orthomosaics are like those maps of Mars where they use software to glue all the individual photos together and it’s a complete map of the planet. You can imagine how useful an orthomosaic can be for dividing up an area for a search and seeing the progress of the search and rescue effort.

Search and rescue teams can use that same data for a digital elevation map. That’s software that gets the topology of the rubble and you can start actually measuring how high the pile is, how thick that slab is, that this piece of rubble must have come from this part of the building, and those sorts of things.

How might ground robots be used in this type of disaster?

The current state of the practice for searching the interior of rubble is to use either a small tracked vehicle, such as an Inkutun VGTV Extreme, which is the most commonly used robot for such situations, or a snakelike robot, such as the Active Scope Camera developed in Japan.

Teledyne FLIR is sending a couple of tracked robots and operators to the site in Surfside, Florida.

Ground robots are typically used to go into places that searchers can’t fit into and go farther than search cameras can. Search cams typically max out at 18 feet, whereas ground robots have been able to go over 60 feet into rubble. They are also used to go into unsafe voids that a rescuer could fit in but that would be unsafe and thus would require teams to work for hours to shore up before anyone could enter it safely.

In theory, ground robots could also be used to allow medical personnel to see and talk with survivors trapped in rubble, and carry small packages of water and medicine to them. But so far no search and rescue teams anywhere have found anyone alive with a ground robot.

What are the challenges for using ground robots inside rubble?

The big problem is seeing inside the rubble. You’ve got basically a concrete, sheetrock, piping and furniture version of pickup sticks. If you can get a robot into the rubble, then the structural engineers can see the interior of that pile of pickup sticks and say “Oh, OK, we’re not going pull on that, that’s going to cause a secondary collapse. OK, we should start on this side, we’ll get through the debris quicker and safer.”

Going inside rubble piles is really hard. Scale is important. If the void spaces are on the order of the size of the robot, it’s tricky. If something goes wrong, it can’t turn around; it has to drive backward. Tortuosity – how many turns per meter – is also important. The more turns, the harder it is.

There’s also different surfaces. The robot may be on a concrete floor, next thing it’s on a patch of somebody’s shag carpeting. Then it’s got to go through a bunch of concrete that’s been pulverized into sand. There’s dust kicking up. The surroundings may be wet from all the sewage and all the water from sprinkler systems and the sand and dust start acting like mud. So it gets really hard really fast in terms of mobility.

What is your current research focus?

We look at human-robot interaction. We discovered that of all of the robots we could find in use, including ours – and we were the leading group in deploying robots in disasters – 51% of the failures during a disaster deployment were due to human error.

It’s challenging to work in these environments. I’ve never been in a disaster where there wasn’t some sort of surprise related to perception, something that you didn’t realize you needed to look for until you’re there.

What is your ideal search and rescue robot?

I’d like someone to develop a robot ferret. Ferrets are kind of snakey-looking mammals. But they have legs, small little legs. They can scoot around like a snake. They can claw with their little feet and climb up on uneven rocks. They can do a full meerkat, meaning they can stretch up really high and look around. They’re really good at balance, so they don’t fall over. They can be looking up and all of a sudden the ground starts to shift and they’re down and they’re gone – they’re fast.

How do you see the field of search and rescue robots going forward?

There’s no real funding for these types of ground robots. So there’s no economic incentive to develop robots for building collapses, which are very rare, thank goodness.

And the public safety agencies can’t afford them. They typically cost US\$50,000 to \$150,000 versus as little as \$1,000 for an aerial drone. So the cost-benefit doesn’t seem to be there.

I’m very frustrated with this. We’re still about the same level we were 20 years ago at the World Trade Center.

Robin R. Murphy volunteers with the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue. She receives funding from the National Science Foundation for her work in disaster robotics and with CRASAR. She is affiliated with Texas A&M.

Original post published in The Conversation.

Enrica Soria, a PhD student at LIS © Alain Herzog / 2021 EPFL

By Clara Marc

There is strength in numbers. That’s true not only for humans, but for drones too. By flying in a swarm, they can cover larger areas and collect a wider range of data, since each drone can be equipped with different sensors.

Preventing drones from bumping into each other
One reason why drone swarms haven’t been used more widely is the risk of gridlock within the swarm. Studies on the collective movement of animals show that each agent tends to coordinate its movements with the others, adjusting its trajectory so as to keep a safe inter-agent distance or to travel in alignment, for example.

“In a drone swarm, when one drone changes its trajectory to avoid an obstacle, its neighbors automatically synchronize their movements accordingly,” says Dario Floreano, a professor at EPFL’s School of Engineering and head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS). “But that often causes the swarm to slow down, generates gridlock within the swarm or even leads to collisions.”

Not just reacting, but also predicting
Enrica Soria, a PhD student at LIS, has come up with a new method for getting around that problem. She has developed a predictive control model that allows drones to not just react to others in a swarm, but also to anticipate their own movements and predict those of their neighbors. “Our model gives drones the ability to determine when a neighbor is about to slow down, meaning the slowdown has less of an effect on their own flight,” says Soria. The model works by programing in locally controlled, simple rules, such as a minimum inter-agent distance to maintain, a set velocity to keep, or a specific direction to follow. Soria’s work has just been published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

With Soria’s model, drones are much less dependent on commands issued by a central computer. Drones in aerial light shows, for example, get their instructions from a computer that calculates each one’s trajectory to avoid a collision. “But with our model, drones are commanded using local information and can modify their trajectories autonomously,” says Soria.

A model inspired by nature
Tests run at LIS show that Soria’s system improves the speed, order and safety of drone swarms in areas with a lot of obstacles. “We don’t yet know if, or to what extent, animals are able to predict the movements of those around them,” says Floreano. “But biologists have recently suggested that the synchronized direction changes observed in some large groups would require a more sophisticated cognitive ability than what has been believed until now.”

References

• PAPER – Predictive control of aerial swarms in cluttered environments. Soria, E., Schiano, F. and Floreano, D., Nat Mach Intell (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-021-00341-y

In the last online technical talk, Adam Bry and Hayk Martiros from Skydio explained how their company tackles real-world issues when it comes to drone flying.

Abstract

Skydio is the leading US drone company and the world leader in autonomous flight. Our drones are used for everything from capturing amazing video, to inspecting bridges, to tracking progress on construction sites. At the core of our products is a vision-based autonomy system with seven years of development at Skydio, drawing on decades of academic research. This system pushes the state of the art in deep learning, geometric computer vision, motion planning, and control with a particular focus on real-world robustness. Drones encounter extreme visual scenarios not typically considered by academia nor encountered by cars, ground robots, or AR applications. They are commonly flown in scenes with few or no semantic priors and must deftly navigate thin objects, extreme lighting, camera artifacts, motion blur, textureless surfaces, vibrations, dirt, camera smudges, and fog. These challenges are daunting for classical vision – because photometric signals are simply not consistent and for learning-based methods – because there is no ground truth for direct supervision of deep networks. In this talk we’ll take a detailed look at these issues and the algorithms we’ve developed to tackle them. We will also cover the new capabilities on top of our core navigation engine to autonomously map complex scenes and capture all surfaces, by performing real-time 3D reconstruction across multiple flights.

Biography

Adam is co-founder and CEO at Skydio. He has two decades of experience with small UAS, starting as a national champion R/C airplane aerobatics pilot. As a grad student at MIT, he did award winning research that pioneered autonomous flight for drones, transferring much of what he learned as an R/C pilot into software that enables drones to fly themselves. Adam co-founded Google’s drone delivery project. He currently serves on the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Olin College and an SM in Aero/Astro from MIT. He has co-authored numerous technical papers and patents, and was also recognized on MIT’s TR35 list for young innovators.

Hayk was the first engineering hire at Skydio and he leads the autonomy team. He is an experienced roboticist who develops robust approaches to computer vision, deep learning, nonlinear optimization, and motion planning to bring intelligent robots into the mainstream. His team’s state of the art work in UAV visual localization, obstacle avoidance, and navigation of complex scenarios is at the core of every Skydio drone. He also has an interest in systems architecture and symbolic computation. His previous works include novel hexapedal robots, collaboration between robot arms, micro-robot factories, solar panel farms, and self-balancing motorcycles. Hayk is a graduate of Stanford University and Princeton University.

Featuring Guest Panelist: Davide Scaramuzza and Margaritha Chli

The next technical talk is happening this Friday the 12th of March at 3pm EST. Join Chad Jenkins from the University of Michigan in his talk ‘That Ain’t Right: AI Mistakes and Black Lives’ using this link.

Insects’ remarkable acrobatic traits help them navigate the aerial world, with all of its wind gusts, obstacles, and general uncertainty. Image: courtesy of Kevin Yufeng Chen

By Daniel Ackerman

If you’ve ever swatted a mosquito away from your face, only to have it return again (and again and again), you know that insects can be remarkably acrobatic and resilient in flight. Those traits help them navigate the aerial world, with all of its wind gusts, obstacles, and general uncertainty. Such traits are also hard to build into flying robots, but MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has built a system that approaches insects’ agility.

Chen, a member of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Research Laboratory of Electronics, has developed insect-sized drones with unprecedented dexterity and resilience. The aerial robots are powered by a new class of soft actuator, which allows them to withstand the physical travails of real-world flight. Chen hopes the robots could one day aid humans by pollinating crops or performing machinery inspections in cramped spaces.

Chen’s work appears this month in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics. His co-authors include MIT PhD student Zhijian Ren, Harvard University PhD student Siyi Xu, and City University of Hong Kong roboticist Pakpong Chirarattananon.

Typically, drones require wide open spaces because they’re neither nimble enough to navigate confined spaces nor robust enough to withstand collisions in a crowd. “If we look at most drones today, they’re usually quite big,” says Chen. “Most of their applications involve flying outdoors. The question is: Can you create insect-scale robots that can move around in very complex, cluttered spaces?”

According to Chen, “The challenge of building small aerial robots is immense.” Pint-sized drones require a fundamentally different construction from larger ones. Large drones are usually powered by motors, but motors lose efficiency as you shrink them. So, Chen says, for insect-like robots “you need to look for alternatives.”

The principal alternative until now has been employing a small, rigid actuator built from piezoelectric ceramic materials. While piezoelectric ceramics allowed the first generation of tiny robots to take flight, they’re quite fragile. And that’s a problem when you’re building a robot to mimic an insect — foraging bumblebees endure a collision about once every second.

Chen designed a more resilient tiny drone using soft actuators instead of hard, fragile ones. The soft actuators are made of thin rubber cylinders coated in carbon nanotubes. When voltage is applied to the carbon nanotubes, they produce an electrostatic force that squeezes and elongates the rubber cylinder. Repeated elongation and contraction causes the drone’s wings to beat — fast.

Chen’s actuators can flap nearly 500 times per second, giving the drone insect-like resilience. “You can hit it when it’s flying, and it can recover,” says Chen. “It can also do aggressive maneuvers like somersaults in the air.” And it weighs in at just 0.6 grams, approximately the mass of a large bumble bee. The drone looks a bit like a tiny cassette tape with wings, though Chen is working on a new prototype shaped like a dragonfly.

“Achieving flight with a centimeter-scale robot is always an impressive feat,” says Farrell Helbling, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University, who was not involved in the research. “Because of the soft actuators’ inherent compliance, the robot can safely run into obstacles without greatly inhibiting flight. This feature is well-suited for flight in cluttered, dynamic environments and could be very useful for any number of real-world applications.”

Helbling adds that a key step toward those applications will be untethering the robots from a wired power source, which is currently required by the actuators’ high operating voltage. “I’m excited to see how the authors will reduce operating voltage so that they may one day be able to achieve untethered flight in real-world environments.”

Building insect-like robots can provide a window into the biology and physics of insect flight, a longstanding avenue of inquiry for researchers. Chen’s work addresses these questions through a kind of reverse engineering. “If you want to learn how insects fly, it is very instructive to build a scale robot model,” he says. “You can perturb a few things and see how it affects the kinematics or how the fluid forces change. That will help you understand how those things fly.” But Chen aims to do more than add to entomology textbooks. His drones can also be useful in industry and agriculture.

Chen says his mini-aerialists could navigate complex machinery to ensure safety and functionality. “Think about the inspection of a turbine engine. You’d want a drone to move around [an enclosed space] with a small camera to check for cracks on the turbine plates.”

Other potential applications include artificial pollination of crops or completing search-and-rescue missions following a disaster. “All those things can be very challenging for existing large-scale robots,” says Chen. Sometimes, bigger isn’t better.

How do honeybees land on flowers or avoid obstacles? One would expect such questions to be mostly of interest to biologists. However, the rise of small electronics and robotic systems has also made them relevant to robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). For example, small flying robots are extremely restricted in terms of the sensors and processing that they can carry onboard. If these robots are to be as autonomous as the much larger self-driving cars, they will have to use an extremely efficient type of artificial intelligence – similar to the highly developed intelligence possessed by flying insects.

Optical flow

One of the main tricks up the insect’s sleeve is the extensive use of ‘optical flow’: the way in which objects move in their view. They use it to land on flowers and avoid obstacles or predators. Insects use surprisingly simple and elegant optical flow strategies to tackle complex tasks. For example, for landing, honeybees keep the optical flow divergence (how quickly things get bigger in view) constant when going down. By following this simple rule, they automatically make smooth, soft landings.

I started my work on optical flow control from enthusiasm about such elegant, simple strategies. However, developing the control methods to actually implement these strategies in flying robots turned out to be far from trivial. For example, when I first worked on optical flow landing my flying robots would not actually land, but they started to oscillate, continuously going up and down, just above the landing surface.

Honeybees are a fertile source of inspiration for the AI of small drones. They are able to perform an impressive repertoire of complex behaviors with very limited processing (~960,000 neurons). Drones are in their turn very interesting “models” for biology. Testing out hypotheses from biology on drones can bring novel insights into the problems faced and solved by flying insects like honeybees.

Fundamental problems

Optical flow has two fundamental problems that have been widely described in the growing literature on bio-inspired robotics. The first problem is that optical flow only provides mixed information on distances and velocities – and not on distance or velocity separately. To illustrate, if there are two landing drones and one of them flies twice as high and twice as fast as the other drone, then they experience exactly the same optical flow. However, for good control these two drones should actually react differently to deviations in the optical flow divergence. If a drone does not adapt its reactions to the height when landing, it will never arrive and start to oscillate above the landing surface.

The second problem is that optical flow is very small and little informative in the direction in which a robot is moving. This is very unfortunate for obstacle avoidance, because it means that the obstacles straight ahead of the robot are the hardest ones to detect! The problems are illustrated in the figures below.

Left: Problem 1: The white drone is twice as high and goes down twice as fast as the red drone. However, they both see the same optical flow divergence, as in both cases the object in view gets twice as big. This can be seen by the colored triangles – at the highest position it captures the full angle of the landing platform, at the lowest position it only covers half of the landing platform in the field of view.
Right: Problem 2: The drone moves straight forward, in the direction of its forward-looking camera. Hence, the focus of expansion is straight ahead. Objects close to this direction, like the red obstacle, have very little flow. This is illustrated by the red lines in the figure: The angles of these lines with respect to the camera are very similar. Objects further from this direction, like the green obstacle, have considerable flow. Indeed, the green lines show that the angle gets quickly bigger when the drone moves forward.

Learning visual appearance as the solution

In an article published in Nature Machine Intelligence today [1], we propose a solution to both problems. The main idea was that both problems of optical flow would disappear if the robots were able to interpret not only optical flow, but also the visual appearance of objects in their environment. This solution becomes evident from the above figures. The rectangular insets show the images captured by the drones. For the first problem it is evident that the image perfectly captures the difference in height between the white and red drone: The landing platform is simply larger in the red drone’s image. For the second problem the red obstacle is as large as the green one in the drone’s image. Given their identical size, the obstacles are equally close to the drone.

Exploiting visual appearance as captured by an image would allow robots to see distances to objects in the scene similarly to how we humans can estimate distances in a still picture. This would allow drones to immediately pick the right control gain for optical flow control and it would allow them to see obstacles in the flight direction. The only question was: How can a flying robot learn to see distances like that?

The key to this question lay in a theory I devised a few years back [2], which showed that flying robots can actively induce optical flow oscillations to perceive distances to objects in the scene. In the approach proposed in the Nature Machine Intelligence article the robots use such oscillations in order to learn what the objects in their environment look like at different distances. In this way, the robot can for example learn how fine the texture of grass is when looking at it from different heights during landing, or how thick tree barks are at different distances when navigating in a forest.

Relevance to robotics and applications

Implementing this learning process on flying robots led to much faster, smoother optical flow landings than we ever achieved before. Moreover, for obstacle avoidance, the robots were now also able to see obstacles in the flight direction very clearly. This did not only improve obstacle detection performance, but also allowed our robots to speed up. We believe that the proposed methods will be very relevant to resource-constrained flying robots, especially when they operate in a rather confined environment, such as flying in greenhouses to monitor crop or keeping track of the stock in warehouses.

It is interesting to compare our way of distance learning with recent methods in the computer vision domain for single camera (monocular) distance perception. In the field of computer vision, self-supervised learning of monocular distance perception is done with the help of projective geometry and the reconstruction of images. This results in impressively accurate, dense distance maps. However, these maps are still “unscaled” – they can show that one object is twice as far as another one but cannot convey distances in an absolute sense.

In contrast, our proposed method provides “scaled” distance estimates. Interestingly, the scaling is not in terms of meters but in terms of control gains that would lead the drone to oscillate. This makes it very relevant for control. This feels very much like the way in which we humans perceive distances. Also for us it may be more natural to reason in terms of actions (“Is an object within reach?”, “How many steps do I roughly need to get to a place?”) than in terms of meters. It hence reminds very much of the perception of “affordances”, a concept forwarded by Gibson, who introduced the concept of optical flow [3].

Picture of our drone during obstacle avoidance experiments. At first, the drone flies forward while trying to keep the height constant by keeping the vertical optical flow equal to zero. If it gets close to an obstacle, it will oscillate. The increasing oscillation when approaching an obstacle is used to learn how to see distance by means of visual appearance. After learning, the drone can fly faster and safer. For the experiments we used a Parrot Bebop 2 drone, replacing its onboard software with the Paparazzi open source autopilot – performing all computing onboard of the drone’s native processor.

Relevance to biology

The findings are not only relevant to robotics, but also provide a new hypothesis for insect intelligence. Typical honeybee experiments start with a learning phase, in which honeybees exhibit various oscillatory behaviors when they get acquainted with a new environment and related novel cues like artificial flowers. The final measurements presented in articles typically take place after this learning phase has finished and focus predominantly on the role of optical flow. The presented learning process forms a novel hypothesis on how flying insects improve their navigational skills over their lifetime. This suggests that we should set up more studies to investigate and report on this learning phase.

Guido de Croon, Christophe De Wagter, and Tobias Seid.

References

• Enhancing optical-flow-based control by learning visual appearance cues for flying robots. G.C.H.E. de Croon, C. De Wagter, and T. Seidl, Nature Machine Intelligence 3(1), 2021.
• Monocular distance estimation with optical flow maneuvers and efference copies: a stability-based strategy. G.C.H.E. de Croon, Bioinspiration & biomimetics, 11(1), 016004.
• The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. J.J. Gibson (1979).

Robotics researchers at the University of Zurich show how onboard cameras can be used to keep damaged quadcopters in the air and flying stably – even without GPS.

As anxious passengers are often reassured, commercial aircrafts can easily continue to fly even if one of the engines stops working. But for drones with four propellers – also known as quadcopters – the failure of one motor is a bigger problem. With only three rotors working, the drone loses stability and inevitably crashes unless an emergency control strategy sets in.

Researchers at the University of Zurich and the Delft University of Technology have now found a solution to this problem: They show that information from onboard cameras can be used to stabilize the drone and keep it flying autonomously after one rotor suddenly gives out.

Spinning like a ballerina

“When one rotor fails, the drone begins to spin on itself like a ballerina,” explains Davide Scaramuzza, head of the Robotics and Perception Group at UZH and of the Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge at NCCR Robotics, which funded the research. “This high-speed rotational motion causes standard controllers to fail unless the drone has access to very accurate position measurements.” In other words, once it starts spinning, the drone is no longer able to estimate its position in space and eventually crashes.

One way to solve this problem is to provide the drone with a reference position through GPS. But there are many places where GPS signals are unavailable. In their study, the researchers solved this issue for the first time without relying on GPS, instead using visual information from different types of onboard cameras.

Event cameras work well in low light

The researchers equipped their quadcopters with two types of cameras: standard ones, which record images several times per second at a fixed rate, and event cameras, which are based on independent pixels that are only activated when they detect a change in the light that reaches them.

The research team developed algorithms that combine information from the two sensors and use it to track the quadrotor’s position relative to its surroundings. This enables the onboard computer to control the drone as it flies – and spins – with only three rotors. The researchers found that both types of cameras perform well in normal light conditions. “When illumination decreases, however, standard cameras begin to experience motion blur that ultimately disorients the drone and crashes it, whereas event cameras also work well in very low light,” says first author Sihao Sun, a postdoc in Scaramuzza’s lab.

Increased safety to avoid accidents

The problem addressed by this study is a relevant one, because quadcopters are becoming widespread and rotor failure may cause accidents. The researchers believe that this work can improve quadrotor flight safety in all areas where GPS signal is weak or absent.

• PUBLICATION – Autonomous Quadrotor Flight despite Rotor Failure with Onboard Vision Sensors: Frames vs. Events. Sihao Sun, Giovanni Cioffi, Coen de Visser and Davide Scaramuzza. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letter. January 5, 2021. DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2020.3048875

A few days ago, Robotics Today hosted an online seminar with Professor Davide Scaramuzza from the University of Zurich. The seminar was recorded, so you can watch it now in case you missed it.

“Robotics Today – A series of technical talks” is a virtual robotics seminar series. The goal of the series is to bring the robotics community together during these challenging times. The seminars are open to the public. The format of the seminar consists of a technical talk live captioned and streamed via Web and Twitter, followed by an interactive discussion between the speaker and a panel of faculty, postdocs, and students that will moderate audience questions.

Abstract

Autonomous quadrotors will soon play a major role in search-and-rescue, delivery, and inspection missions, where a fast response is crucial. However, their speed and maneuverability are still far from those of birds and human pilots. High speed is particularly important: since drone battery life is usually limited to 20-30 minutes, drones need to fly faster to cover longer distances. However, to do so, they need faster sensors and algorithms. Human pilots take years to learn the skills to navigate drones. What does it take to make drones navigate as good or even better than human pilots? Autonomous, agile navigation through unknown, GPS-denied environments poses several challenges for robotics research in terms of perception, planning, learning, and control. In this talk, I will show how the combination of both model-based and machine learning methods united with the power of new, low-latency sensors, such as event cameras, can allow drones to achieve unprecedented speed and robustness by relying solely on onboard computing.

Biography

Davide Scaramuzza (Italian) is a Professor of Robotics and Perception at both departments of Informatics (University of Zurich) and Neuroinformatics (joint between the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich), where he directs the Robotics and Perception Group. His research lies at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and machine learning, using standard cameras and event cameras, and aims to enable autonomous, agile navigation of micro drones in search and rescue applications. After a Ph.D. at ETH Zurich (with Roland Siegwart) and a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania (with Vijay Kumar and Kostas Daniilidis), from 2009 to 2012, he led the European project sFly, which introduced the PX4 autopilot and pioneered visual-SLAM-based autonomous navigation of micro drones in GPS-denied environments. From 2015 to 2018, he was part of the DARPA FLA program (Fast Lightweight Autonomy) to research autonomous, agile navigation of micro drones in GPS-denied environments. In 2018, his team won the IROS 2018 Autonomous Drone Race, and in 2019 it ranked second in the AlphaPilot Drone Racing world championship. For his research contributions to autonomous, vision-based, drone navigation and event cameras, he won prestigious awards, such as a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award, an SNSF-ERC Starting Grant, a Google Research Award, the KUKA Innovation Award, two Qualcomm Innovation Fellowships, the European Young Research Award, the Misha Mahowald Neuromorphic Engineering Award, and several paper awards. He co-authored the book “Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots” (published by MIT Press; 10,000 copies sold) and more than 100 papers on robotics and perception published in top-ranked journals (Science Robotics, TRO, T-PAMI, IJCV, IJRR) and conferences (RSS, ICRA, CVPR, ICCV, CORL, NeurIPS). He has served as a consultant for the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency’s Fukushima Action Plan on Nuclear Safety and several drones and computer-vision companies, to which he has also transferred research results. In 2015, he cofounded Zurich-Eye, today Facebook Zurich, which developed the visual-inertial SLAM system running in Oculus Quest VR headsets. He was also the strategic advisor of Dacuda, today Magic Leap Zurich. In 2020, he cofounded SUIND, which develops camera-based safety solutions for commercial drones. Many aspects of his research have been prominently featured in wider media, such as The New York Times, BBC News, Discovery Channel, La Repubblica, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, and also in technology-focused media, such as IEEE Spectrum, MIT Technology Review, Tech Crunch, Wired, The Verge.

You can also view past seminars on the Robotics Today YouTube Channel.

Credit: Imperial College London

By Caroline Brogan

Imperial researchers have created drones that can attach sensors to trees to monitor environmental and ecological changes in forests.

Sensors for forest monitoring are already used to track changes in temperature, humidity and light, as well as the movements of animals and insects through their habitat. They also help to detect and monitor forest fires and can provide valuable data on how climate change and other human activities are impacting the natural world.

However, placing these sensors can prove difficult in large, tall forests, and climbing trees to place them poses its own risks.

Now, researchers at Imperial College London’s Aerial Robotics Lab have developed drones that can shoot sensor-containing darts onto trees several metres away in cluttered environments like forests. The drones can also place sensors through contact or by perching on tree branches.

Via GIPHY. Credit: Imperial College London

I like to think of them as artificial forest inhabitants who will soon watch over the ecosystem and provide the data we need to protect the environment.

Professor Mirko Kovac, Department of Aeronautics

The researchers hope the drones will be used in future to create networks of sensors to boost data on forest ecosystems, and to track hard-to-navigate biomes like the Amazon rainforest.

Lead researcher Professor Mirko Kovac, Director of the Aerial Robotics Lab from the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial said: “Monitoring forest ecosystems can be difficult, but our drones could deploy whole networks of sensors to boost the amount and precision of environmental and ecological data.

“I like to think of them as artificial forest inhabitants who will soon watch over the ecosystem and provide the data we need to protect the environment.”

The drones are equipped with cameras to help identify suitable targets, and a smart material that changes shape when heated to launch the darts, which then stick to the trees. They can also perch on tree branches like birds to collect data themselves, acting as mobile sensors.

The researchers have tested their drones at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) and on trees at Imperial’s Silwood Park Campus.

Via GIPHY. Credit: Imperial College London

We aim to introduce new design and control strategies to allow drones to effectively operate in forested environments.

Dr Salua Hamaza, Department of Aeronautics

The drones are currently controlled by people: using control units, the researchers watch through the camera lens to select target trees and shoot the darts. The next step is to make the drones autonomous, so that researchers can test how they fare in denser forest environments without human guidance.

Co-author André Farhina, of the Department of Aeronautics, said: “There are plenty of challenges to be addressed before the drones can be regularly used in forests, like achieving a careful balance between human input and automated tasks so that they can be used safely while remaining adaptable to unpredictable environments.”

Co-author Dr Salua Hamaza, also of the Department of Aeronautics, said: “We aim to introduce new design and control strategies to allow drones to effectively operate in forested environments. Exploiting smart mechanisms and new sensing techniques we can off-load the on-board computation, and create platforms that are energy-efficient and better performing.”

• Hamaza, S., Farinha, A., Nguyen, H.N. and Kovac, M., 2020, November. Sensor Delivery in Forests with Aerial Robots: A New Paradigm for Environmental Monitoring. In IEEE IROS Workshop on Perception, Planning and Mobility in Forestry Robotics.
• Nguyen, H.N., Siddall, R., Stephens, B., Navarro-Rubio, A. and Kova?, M., 2019, April. A Passively Adaptive Microspine Grapple for Robust, Controllable Perching. In 2019 2nd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) (pp. 80-87). IEEE. Video.
• Farinha, A., Zufferey, R., Zheng, P., Armanini, S.F. and Kovac, M., 2020. Unmanned Aerial Sensor Placement for Cluttered Environments. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 5(4), pp.6623-6630. Video.

These works were funded by the EPSRC, ORCA Robotics Hub, EU Horizon 2020, NERC (QMEE CDT), UKAEA with RACE and the Royal Society.

NCCR Robotics researchers at EPFL have developed a drone with a feathered wing and tail that give it unprecedented flight agility.

The northern goshawk is a fast, powerful raptor that flies effortlessly through forests. This bird was the design inspiration for the next-generation drone developed by scientists of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems of EPFL led by Dario Floreano. They carefully studied the shape of the bird’s wings and tail and its flight behavior, and used that information to develop a drone with similar characteristics.

“Goshawks move their wings and tails in tandem to carry out the desired motion, whether it is rapid changes of direction when hunting in forests, fast flight when chasing prey in the open terrain, or when efficiently gliding to save energy,” says Enrico Ajanic, the first author and PhD student in Floreano’s lab. Floreano adds: “our design extracts principles of avian agile flight to create a drone that can approximate the flight performance of raptors, but also tests the biological hypothesis that a morphing tail plays an important role in achieving faster turns, decelerations, and even slow flight.”

A drone that moves its wings and tail

The engineers already designed a bird-inspired drone with morphing wing back in 2016. In a step forward, their new model can adjust the shape of its wing and tail thanks to its artificial feathers. “It was fairly complicated to design and build these mechanisms, but we were able to improve the wing so that it behaves more like that of a goshawk,” says Ajanic. “Now that the drone includes a feathered tail that morphs in synergy with the wing, it delivers unparalleled agility.” The drone changes the shape of its wing and tail to change direction faster, fly slower without falling to the ground, and reduce air resistance when flying fast. It uses a propeller for forward thrust instead of flapping wings because it is more efficient and makes the new wing and tail system applicable to other winged drones and airplanes.

The advantage of winged drones over quadrotor designs is that they have a longer flight time for the same weight. However, quadrotors tend to have greater dexterity, as they can hover in place and make sharp turns. “The drone we just developed is somewhere in the middle. It can fly for a long time yet is almost as agile as quadrotors,” says Floreano. This combination of features is especially useful for flying in forests or in cities between buildings, as it can be necessary during rescue operation. The project is part of the Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge of NCCR Robotics.

Opportunities for artificial intelligence

Flying this new type of drone isn’t easy, due to the large number of wing and tail configurations possible. To take full advantage of the drone’s flight capabilities, Floreano’s team plans to incorporate artificial intelligence into the drone’s flight system so that it can fly semi-automatically. The team’s research has been published in Science Robotics.

• PUBLICATION – Bioinspired wing and tail morphing extends drone flight capabilities. E. Ajanic, M. Feroskhan, S. Mintchev, F. Noca, D. Floreano. Science Robotics, 5, eabc2897 (2020)

Lily flies through gusts: Scientists from Bristol and the RVC have discovered how birds fly in gusty conditions – with implications for small-scale aircraft design. Image credit: Cheney et al 2020

“Birds routinely fly in high winds close to buildings and terrain – often in gusts as fast as their flight speed. So the ability to cope with strong and sudden changes in wind is essential for their survival and to be able to do things like land safely and capture prey,” said Dr Shane Windsor from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol.

“We know birds cope amazingly well in conditions which challenge engineered air vehicles of a similar size but, until now, we didn’t understand the mechanics behind it,” said Dr Windsor.

The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reveals how bird wings act as a suspension system to cope with changing wind conditions. The team, which included Bristol PhD student Nicholas Durston and researchers Jialei Song and James Usherwood from Dongguan University of Technology in China and the RVC respectively, used an innovative combination of high-speed, video-based 3D surface reconstruction, computed tomography (CT) scans, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to understand how birds ‘reject’ gusts through wing morphing, i.e. by changing the shape and posture of their wings.

In the experiment, conducted in the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College, the team filmed Lily, a barn owl, gliding through a range of fan-generated vertical gusts, the strongest of which was as fast as her flight speed. Lily is a trained falconry bird who is a veteran of many nature documentaries, so wasn’t fazed in the least by all the lights and cameras. “We began with very gentle gusts in case Lily had any difficulties, but soon found that – even at the highest gust speeds we could make – Lily was unperturbed; she flew straight through to get the food reward being held by her trainer, Lloyd Buck,” commented Professor Richard Bomphrey of the Royal Veterinary College.

“Lily flew through the bumpy gusts and consistently kept her head and torso amazingly stable over the trajectory, as if she was flying with a suspension system. When we analysed it, what surprised us was that the suspension-system effect wasn’t just due to aerodynamics, but benefited from the mass in her wings. For reference, each of our upper limbs is about 5% of our body weight; for a bird it’s about double, and they use that mass to effectively absorb the gust,” said joint lead-author Dr Jorn Cheney from the Royal Veterinary College.

“Perhaps most exciting is the discovery that the very fastest part of the suspension effect is built into the mechanics of the wings, so birds don’t actively need to do anything for it to work. The mechanics are very elegant. When you strike a ball at the sweetspot of a bat or racquet, your hand is not jarred because the force there cancels out. Anyone who plays a bat-and-ball sport knows how effortless this feels. A wing has a sweetspot, just like a bat. Our analysis suggests that the force of the gust acts near this sweetspot and this markedly reduces the disturbance to the body during the first fraction of a second. The process is automatic and buys just enough time for other clever stabilising processes to kick in,” added joint lead-author, Dr Jonathan Stevenson from the University of Bristol.

Dr Windsor said the next step for the research, which was funded by the European Research Council (ERC), Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Wellcome Trust, is to develop bio-inspired suspension systems for small-scale aircraft.

• PAPER – Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts. Jorn A. Cheney, Jonathan P. J. Stevenson, Nicholas E. Durston, Jialei Song, James R. Usherwood, Richard J. Bomphrey and Shane P. Windsor. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Now a collaboration between researchers from the University of Zurich (part of the NCCR Robotics consortium) and Intel has developed a quadcopter that can learn to fly acrobatics autonomously, paving the way to drones that can fully exploit their agility and speed, and cover more distance within their battery life. Though no drone mission will probably ever require a power loop or a Matty flip – the typical acrobatic maneuvers – a drone that can perform them autonomously is likely to be more efficient at all times.

A step forward towards integrating drones in our everyday life

Researchers of the University of Zurich and Intel developed a novel algorithm that pushes autonomous drones with only on-board sensing and computation close to their physical limits. To prove the efficiency of the developed algorithm, the researchers made an autonomous quadrotor fly acrobatic maneuvers such as the Power Loop, the Barrel Roll, and the Matty Flip, during which the drone incurs accelerations of up to 3g. “Several applications of drones, such as search-and-rescue or delivery, will strongly benefit from faster drones, which can cover large distances in limited time. With this algorithm we have taken a step forward towards integrating autonomously navigating drones into our everyday life”, says Davide Scaramuzza, Professor and Director of the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich, and head of the Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge for NCCR Robotics.

Simulation for training, real-world for testing
The navigation algorithm that allows drones to fly acrobatic maneuvers is represented by an artificial neural network that directly converts observations from the on-board camera and inertial sensors, to control commands. This neural network is trained exclusively in simulation. Learning agile maneuvers entirely in simulation has several advantages: (i) Maneuvers can be simply specified by reference trajectories in simulation and do not require expensive demonstrations by a human pilot, (ii) training is safe and does not pose any physical risk to the quadrotor, and (iii) the approach can scale to a large number of diverse maneuvers, including ones that can only be performed by the very best human pilots.

The algorithm transfers its knowledge to reality by using appropriate abstractions of the visual and inertial inputs (i.e., feature tracks and integrated inertial measurements), which decreases the gap between the simulated and physical world. Indeed, without physically-accurate modeling of the world or any fine-tuning on real-world data, the trained neural network can be deployed on a real quadrotor to perform acrobatic maneuvers.

Towards fully autonomous drones
Within a few hours of training in simulation, our algorithm learns to fly acrobatic maneuvers with an accuracy comparable to professional human pilots. Nevertheless, the research team warns that there is still a significant gap between what human pilots and autonomous drones can do. “The best human pilots still have an edge over autonomous drones given their ability to quickly interpret and adapt to unexpected situations and changes in the environment,” says Prof. Scaramuzza.

Paper: E. Kaufmann*, A. Loquercio*, R. Ranftl, M. Müller, V. Koltun, D. Scaramuzza “Deep Drone Acrobatics”, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2020
Paper
Video
Code

In this episode, Kate Zhou interviews Farrell Helbling, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Microrobotics lab, who has worked on developing the RoboBee, an insect-inspired robot that is the lightest vehicle to achieve untethered flight. Farrell discusses challenges with building the robot at centimeter-scale as well as integration of sensors and power electronics particularly in considerations with weight trade-offs.

Farrell Helbling

Farrell Helbling is a post doctoral fellow at Harvard University, where she focuses on the systems-level design of the Harvard RoboBee, an insect-scale flapping wing robot. Her research looks at the integration of the control system, sensors, and power electronics within the strict weight and power constraints of the vehicle. Her work led to the first untethered flight of an insect scale vehicle and was recently featured on the cover of Nature. She is the recipient of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a 2018 Rising Star in EECS, and co-author on the IROS 2015 Best Student Paper for an insect-scale, hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicle. Her work on the RoboBee project is also featured at the Boston Museum of Science, World Economic Forum, London Science Museum, and the Smithsonian, as well as in the popular press (PBS NewsHour, The New York Times, Science Friday, BBC, and Wired). She is interested in the codesign of mechanical and electrical systems for mass-, power-, and computation-constrained robots.

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By Nicola Nosengo

Drones can do many things, but avoiding obstacles is not their strongest suit yet – especially when they move quickly. Although many flying robots are equipped with cameras that can detect obstacles, it typically takes from 20 to 40 milliseconds for the drone to process the image and react. It may seem quick, but it is not enough to avoid a bird or another drone, or even a static obstacle when the drone itself is flying at high speed. This can be a problem when drones are used in unpredictable environments, or when there are many of them flying in the same area.

Reaction of a few milliseconds
In order to solve this problem, researchers at the University of Zurich have equipped a quadcopter (a drone with four propellers) with special cameras and algorithms that reduced its reaction time down to a few milliseconds – enough to avoid a ball thrown at it from a short distance. The results, published in Science Robotics, can make drones more effective in situations such as the aftermath of a natural disaster. The work was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation through the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics.

“For search and rescue applications, such as after an earthquake, time is very critical, so we need drones that can navigate as fast as possible in order to accomplish more within their limited battery life” explains Davide Scaramuzza, who leads the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich as well as the NCCR Robotics Search and Rescue Grand Challenge. “However, by navigating fast drones are also more exposed to the risk of colliding with obstacles, and even more if these are moving. We realised that a novel type of camera, called Event Camera, are a perfect fit for this purpose”.

Event cameras have smart pixels
Traditional video cameras, such as the ones found in every smartphone, work by regularly taking snapshots of the whole scene. This is done by exposing the pixels of the image all at the same time. This way, though, a moving object can only be detected after all the pixels have been analysed by the on-board computer. Event cameras, on the other hand, have smart pixels that work independently of each other. The pixels that detect no changes remain silent, while the ones that see a change in light intensity immediately send out the information. This means that only a tiny fraction of the all pixels of the image will need to be processed by the onboard computer, therefore speeding up the computation a lot.

Event cameras are a recent innovation, and existing object-detection algorithms for drones do not work well with them. So the researchers had to invent their own algorithms that collect all the events recorded by the camera over a very short time, then subtracts the effect of the drone’s own movement – which typically account for most of the changes in what the camera sees.

Only 3.5 milliseconds to detect incoming objects
Scaramuzza and his team first tested the cameras and algorithms alone. They threw objects of various shapes and sizes towards the camera, and measured how efficient the algorithm was in detecting them. The success rate varied between 81 and 97 per cent, depending on the size of the object and the distance of the throw, and the system only took 3.5 milliseconds to detect incoming objects.

Then the most serious test began: putting cameras on an actual drone, flying it both indoor and outdoor and throwing objects directly at it. The drone was able to avoid the objects – including a ball thrown from a 3-meter distance and travelling at 10 meters per second – more than 90 per cent of the time. When the drone “knew” the size of the object in advance, one camera was enough. When, instead, it had to face objects of varying size, two cameras were used to give it stereoscopic vision.

According to Scaramuzza, these results show that event cameras can increase the speed at which drones can navigate by up to ten times, thus expanding their possible applications. “One day drones will be used for a large variety of applications, such as delivery of goods, transportation of people, aerial filmography and, of course, search and rescue,” he says. “But enabling robots to perceive and make decision faster can be a game changer for also for other domains where reliably detecting incoming obstacles plays a crucial role, such as automotive, good delivery, transportation, mining, and remote inspection with robots”.

Nearly as reliable as human pilots
In the future, the team aims to test this system on an even more agile quadrotor. “Our ultimate goal is to make one day autonomous drones navigate as good as human drone pilots. Currently, in all search and rescue applications where drones are involved, the human is actually in control. If we could have autonomous drones navigate as reliable as human pilots we would then be able to use them for missions that fall beyond line of sight or beyond the reach of the remote control”, says Davide Falanga, the PhD student who is the primary author of the article.

In this interview, Lilly interviews Vijay Kumar, Professor and Dean at the University of Pennsylvania. He discusses coordination, cooperation, and collaboration in multi-robot systems. He also explains where he draws inspiration from in his research, and why robotics has yet to meet science fiction.

Vijay Kumar

Vijay Kumar is the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering with appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Computer and Information Science, and Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Kumar’s group works on creating autonomous ground and aerial robots, designing bio-inspired algorithms for collective behaviors, and on robot swarms. They have won many best paper awards at conferences, and group alumni are leaders in teaching, research, business and entrepreneurship. Kumar is a fellow of ASME and IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Vijay Kumar has held many administrative positions in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, including director of the GRASP Laboratory, chair of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, and the position of the Deputy Dean. He served as the assistant director of robotics and cyber physical systems at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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In this episode Abate interviews Yariv Bash from Flytrex. Yariv discusses how Flytrex works in cooperation with local businesses in a city to use drones to rapidly transport goods in a local region. A practical application is the delivery of food from local restaurants. Yariv discusses Flytrex’s plans for using their USD$7.5 million series B round of funding.

Yariv Bash

Yariv Bash is the CEO of Flytrex, a drone technology company providing comprehensive, autonomous drone delivery systems that enable any business, from SMBs to e-commerce giants, to integrate instant, autonomous on-demand drone delivery into their offering. Flytrex is an end-to-end drone logistics service. Prior to Flytrex, Yariv was the Founder and CEO of SpaceIL – the Israeli team at the Google Lunar X-Prize competition. SpaceIL’s mission: landing an unmanned spaceship on the moon, for a fraction of the traditional cost. Under Yariv’s management, the non-profit SpaceIL raised more than $30 million.

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In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Jaime Fernández Fisac, a PhD student at University of California, Berkeley, working with Professors Shankar Sastry, Claire Tomlin, and Anca Dragan. Fisac is interested in ensuring that autonomous systems such as self-driving cars, delivery drones, and home robots can operate and learn in the world—while satisfying safety constraints. Towards this goal, Fisac discusses different examples of his work with unmanned aerial vehicles and talks about safe robot learning in general; including, the curse of dimensionality and how it impacts control problems (including how some systems can be decomposed into simpler control problems), how simulation can be leveraged before trying learning on a physical robot, safe sets, and how a robot can modify its behavior based on how confident it is that its model is correct.

Below are two videos of work that was discussed during the interview.  The top video is on a framework for learning-based control, and the bottom video discusses adjusting the robot’s confidence about a human’s actions based on how predictably the human is behaving.

Jaime Fernández Fisac

Jaime Fernández Fisac is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He received a B.S./M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, in 2012, and a M.Sc. in Aeronautics from Cranfield University, U.K., in 2013. He is a recipient of the La Caixa Foundation fellowship. His research interests lie between control theory and artificial intelligence, with a focus on safety assurance for autonomous systems. He works to enable AI systems to reason explicitly about the gap between their models and the real world, so that they can safely interact with uncertain environments and human beings, even under inaccurate assumptions.

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In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Kristoffer Richardsson, Michael Zillich, and Paulo Alvito.

Kristoffer Richardsson, Developer at Bitcraze in Sweden, speaks about small open-source unmanned aerial vehicle and different ways of localizing them.

Michael Zillich, CTO of Blue Danube Robotics in Austria, discusses a robotics platform for picking up toys, called Kenny. Zillich talks about Kenny’s design, including sensors and its robotic arm. He discusses how children can show the robot where to put specific toys, about how this large European project was coordinated, and about possibly commercializing this platform.

Paulo Alvito, CEO and CTO and Co-founder of IDMind in Portugal, discusses remote inspection robot for sewers. Alvito discusses what it means to be remotely autonomous, the design of the robot, and how these robots communicate data.

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A Lucie micro drone takes off from a performer’s hand as part of a drone show. Photo: Verity Studios 2017

2017 was the year where indoor drone shows came into their own. Verity Studios’ Lucie drones alone completed more than 20,000 autonomous flights. A Synthetic Swarm of 99 Lucie micro drones started touring with Metallica (the tour is ongoing and was just announced the 5th highest grossing tour worldwide for 2017). Micro drones are now performing at Madison Square Garden as part of each New York Knicks home game — the first resident drone show in a full-scale arena setting. Since early 2017, a drone swarm has been performing weekly on a first cruise ship. And micro drones performed thousands of flights at Changi Airport Singapore as part of its 2017 Christmas show.

Technologically, indoor drone show systems are challenging. They are among the most sophisticated automation systems in existence, with dozens of autonomous robotic aircraft operating in a safety-critical environment. Indoor drone shows require sophisticated, distributed system control and communications architectures to split up and recombine sensing and computation between aircraft and their off-board infrastructure. Core challenges are not unlike those found in modern systems for manned aviation (e.g., combining auto-pilots, GPS, and air traffic control) and in creating tomorrow’s smart cities (e.g., combining semi-autonomous cars with intelligent traffic lights in a city).

These technological challenges are compounded by another: At least for permanent show installations, these systems need to be operated by non-experts. Two years ago, in one of the first major indoor drone shows, a swarm of micro drones flew over the audience at TED 2016. That system was operated by Verity Studios’ expert engineers. Creating a system that is easy enough to use, and reliable enough, to be operated by show staff is a huge technical challenge of its own. All of Verity’s 2017 shows mentioned above were fully client-operated, which speaks to the maturity that Verity’s drone show system has achieved.

Selection of Verity Studios’ indoor drone shows, from the drone swarm at TED 2016 to 20,000 autonomous indoor drone show flights in 2017 alone.

For my colleagues and me, it is these technological challenges, together with the visual impact of indoor drone shows, that makes these systems so much fun and hugely rewarding to work with.

Creative potential

Creatively, the capabilities of today’s indoor drone show systems barely scratch the surface of the technology’s potential. For centuries, show designers were restricted to static scenes. Curtains were required to hide scene changes from the audience, lest stage hands rushing to move set pieces destroy the magic created by a live show. The introduction of automation to seamlessly move backdrops and other stage elements, followed by the debut of automated lighting to smoothly pan and tilt traditional, stationary illumination were revolutionary.

Drones hold the potential for pushing automation further. The Lucies shown in the images above give a first inkling of the creative potential of flying lights that can be freely positioned in 3D space, appearing at will. Larger drones allow to extend that concept to nearly any object, including the creation of flying characters.

Safety

The most critical challenge for indoor drone show systems is safety. Indoor drone shows feature dozens of drones flying simultaneously and in tight formations, close to crowds of people, in a repeated fashion, in the high-pressure environment of a live show. For example, as part of the currently running New York Knicks drone show, 32 drones perform above 16 dancers, live in front of up to 20,000 people in New York’s Madison Square Garden arena, 44 times per season.

There are really only three ways to safely fly drones at live events.

The first way to achieve safety is the same that keeps commercial aviation safe: System redundancy. Using this approach, Verity Studios’ larger, Stage Flyer drones performed safely on Broadway, completing 398 shows and more than 7,000 autonomous flights, flying 8 times a week, in front of up to 2,000 people for a year, without safety nets. The Stage Flyer drones are designed around redundancy. At least two of each components are used (e.g., two batteries, two flight computers, and a duplicate of each sensor) or existing redundancies are exploited. For example, the Stage Flyer drones have only four propellers and motors, like any quadcopter. However, advanced algorithms that exploit the physics of flight allow these multi-rotor vehicles to fly with less than 4 propellers. The overall design allows these drones to continue to fly in spite of any individual component failure. For example, in one of the last Broadway shows, a Stage Flyer experienced a battery failure. The drone switched into its safety flight mode and landed, and the show continued with 7 instead of 8 drones. This approach to drone safety remains highly unusual — all drones available for purchase today have single points of failure.

Verity Studios drone show, 2017 Event Safety Summit, Rock Lititz. Photo: Event Safety Alliance 2017

The second approach to safety is physical separation. This is how safety is usually achieved for outdoor drone shows: Drones perform over a body of water or some roads are temporarily closed to create a large-enough area without people. For example, the Intel drone show at the Super Bowl was recorded far away from the NRG stadium. In fact, for the Super Bowl, safety went even a step further, also adding “temporal separation” to the physical separation (the drone show was actually pre-recorded days ahead of time, and viewers in the stadium and on TV were only shown a video recording). For indoor drone lightshows, physical separation can be achieved using safety nets.

The third approach to safely flying drones at live events is to make the drones so small that they have high inherent safety. Verity Studios’ Lucie micro drones weigh less than 1.8 ounces or 50 grams (including their flexible hull).

As the continuing string of safety incidents involving drones at live events attests, not everyone takes drone safety seriously. This is why my colleagues and I have worked with aviation experts and leading creatives to summarize best practices in an overview paper: Drone shows – Creative potential and best practices.

So, what’s in store for 2018? The appetite for indoor drone shows is huge, which is why Verity Studios is growing its team. And given the 2017 track record, there is a lot to look forward to — your favorite venue’s ceiling is the limit!

In this episode, Jack Rasiel interviews Vijay Kumar, Professor and Dean of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.  Kumar discusses the guiding ideas behind his research on micro unmanned aerial vehicles, gives his thoughts on the future of robotics in the lab and field, and speaks about setting realistic expectations for robotics technology.

Vijay Kumar

Vijay Kumar is the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering with appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Computer and Information Science, and Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Kumar received his Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1987. He has been on the Faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania since 1987. In his time at the university, Dr. Kumar has held numerous positions including director of the GRASP Laboratory, Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, and Deputy Dean for Education in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. From 2012 to 2013, he served as the assistant director of robotics and cyber physical systems at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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New, hybrid RoboBee can fly, dive into water, swim, propel itself back out of water, and safely land. The RoboBee is retrofitted with four buoyant and a central gas collection chamber. Once the RoboBee swims to the surface, an electrolytic plate in the chamber converts water into oxyhydrogen, a combustible gas fuel. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

We’ve seen RoboBees that can fly, stick to walls, and dive into water. Now, get ready for a hybrid RoboBee that can fly, dive into water, swim, propel itself back out of water, and safely land.

New floating devices allow this multipurpose air-water microrobot to stabilize on the water’s surface before an internal combustion system ignites to propel it back into the air.

This latest-generation RoboBee, which is 1,000 times lighter than any previous aerial-to-aquatic robot, could be used for numerous applications, from search-and-rescue operations to environmental monitoring and biological studies.

The research is described in Science Robotics. It was led by a team of scientists from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). 

“This is the first microrobot capable of repeatedly moving in and through complex environments,” says Yufeng Chen, Ph.D., currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute who was a graduate student in the Microrobotics Lab at SEAS when the research was conducted and is the first author of the paper. “We designed new mechanisms that allow the vehicle to directly transition from water to air, something that is beyond what nature can achieve in the insect world.”

Designing a millimeter-sized robot that moves in and out of water has numerous challenges. First, water is 1,000 times denser than air, so the robot’s wing flapping speed will vary widely between the two mediums. If the flapping frequency is too low, the RoboBee can’t fly. If it’s too high, the wing will snap off in the water.

By combining theoretical modeling and experimental data, the researchers found the Goldilocks combination of wing size and flapping rate, scaling the design to allow the bee to operate repeatedly in both air and water. Using this multimodal locomotive strategy, the robot to flaps its wings at 220 to 300 hertz in air and nine to 13 hertz in water.

Another major challenge the team had to address: at the millimeter scale, the water’s surface might as well be a brick wall. Surface tension is more than 10 times the weight of the RoboBee and three times its maximum lift. Previous research demonstrated how impact and sharp edges can break the surface tension of water to facilitate the RoboBee’s entry, but the question remained: How does it get back out again?

To solve that problem, the researchers retrofitted the RoboBee with four buoyant outriggers — essentially robotic floaties — and a central gas collection chamber. Once the RoboBee swims to the surface, an electrolytic plate in the chamber converts water into oxyhydrogen, a combustible gas fuel.

“Because the RoboBee has a limited payload capacity, it cannot carry its own fuel, so we had to come up with a creative solution to exploit resources from the environment,” says Elizabeth Farrell Helbling, graduate student in the Microrobotics Lab and co-author of the paper. “Surface tension is something that we have to overcome to get out of the water, but is also a tool that we can utilize during the gas collection process.”

The gas increases the robot’s buoyancy, pushing the wings out of the water, and the floaties stabilize the RoboBee on the water’s surface. From there, a tiny, novel sparker inside the chamber ignites the gas, propelling the RoboBee out of the water. The robot is designed to passively stabilize in air, so that it always lands on its feet.

“By modifying the vehicle design, we are now able to lift more than three times the payload of the previous RoboBee,” says Chen. “This additional payload capacity allowed us to carry the additional devices including the gas chamber, the electrolytic plates, sparker, and buoyant outriggers, bringing the total weight of the hybrid robot to 175 miligrams, about 90mg heavier than previous designs. We hope that our work investigating tradeoffs like weight and surface tension can inspire future multi-functional microrobots – ones that can move on complex terrains and perform a variety of tasks.”

Because of the lack of onboard sensors and limitations in the current motion-tracking system, the RoboBee cannot yet fly immediately upon propulsion out of water but the team hopes to change that in future research.

“The RoboBee represents a platform where forces are different than what we – at human scale – are used to experiencing,” says Wyss Core Faculty Member Robert Wood, Ph.D., who is also the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard and senior author of the paper. “While flying the robot feels as if it is treading water; while swimming it feels like it is surrounded by molasses. The force from surface tension feels like an impenetrable wall. These small robots give us the opportunity to explore these non-intuitive phenomena in a very rich way.”

The paper was co-authored by Hongqiang Wang, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and SEAS; Noah Jafferis, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute; Raphael Zufferey, Postgraduate Researcher at Imperial College, London; Aaron Ong, Mechanical Engineer at the University of California, San Diego and former member of the Microrobotics Lab; Kevin Ma, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute; Nicholas Gravish, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego and former member of the Microrobotics Lab; Pakpong Chirarattananon, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong and former member of the Microrobotics Lab; and Mirko Kovac, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer at Imperial College, London and former member of the Microrobotics Lab and Wyss Institute. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

• PUBLICATION – Science Robotics: A biologically inspired, flapping-wing, hybrid aerial-aquatic microrobot
• WYSS TECHNOLOGY – Autonomous Flying Microrobots (RoboBees)

The ERL Emergency Robots 2017 competition consisted of four scenarios, inspired by the nuclear accident of Fukushima (Japan, 2011) and designed specifically for multi-domain human-robot teams. The first scenario is The Grand Challenge made up of three domains – sea, air, land, and the other three scenarios are made of only two domains.

The Awards, given for each scenario to the best performing teams, were introduced by Alan Winfield from Bristol Robotics Laboratory and ERL Emergency Coordinator. “The energy, enthusiasm and spirit of cooperation among the teams competing in ERL Emergency was amazing. We witnessed not only great performances from the teams and their robots, but also the drama and excitement of last minute field repairs and workarounds to the robots”, said Alan Winfield.

The Grand Challenge (Scenario 1: land, sea, and air)

After a nuclear power plant has been struck by a potent earthquake and a tsunami, it’s time for the emergency response team to act. Due to high radiation levels, the cooperation of land, sea and air robots is essential. The robots have to find as soon as possible three missing workers and deploy an emergency kit next to them. Secondly, the robots check for any structural damage of the building and to the pipes connecting the reactor to the sea for cooling purposes. In case of damaged or leaking pipes, the corresponding valves are to be closed both in the machine room and underwater to avoid radioactive contamination. Closing the wrong valves may cause a reduction in the amount of seawater available for cooling down the reactor.

1st Prize: Telerob, Germany (land) + Universitat de Girona, Spain (sea) + INESTEC/ISEP Aerial Robotics, Portugal (air)

“Our underwater robot Sparus II AUV was used to create maps of the underwater environment and to autonomously detect some targets. The algorithms developed by master and PhD students and the robustness of the platform allowed us to obtain good results even in the challenging conditions of the competition. The multi-domain competition required the coordination with the other robots (land and air), which offered us a unique opportunity for testing our communication capabilities.”, said Marc Carreras from the University of Girona.

“Autonomy was showing its advantages as well as a good situational awareness. The advanced mission documentation, which was requested in the competition, enables the first responders to get a fast and reliable situational understanding to finally reach the necessary situational ownership. The ERL Emergency competition should further focus on improving the robot-human-teaming”, said Andreas Ciossek from Telerob.

“The INESC TEC participation in ERL Emergency 2017 allowed us to validate our robotics technology in a real-world scenario with a relevant social and economical impact. Furthermore, it helped raising public awareness of the role that advanced robots can play in disaster scenarios aiding human teams in critical operations, and it confirmed once again the leading role of European robotics research”, said Eduardo Silva from ISEP/INESC TEC.

Read more about their experience here.

2nd Prize: IIS Piombino CVP, Italy (air) + Robdos, Spain, + IMM, Poland (land and sea)

3rd Prize: Raptors, Poland (air & land) + Oubot, Hungary (sea)

Survey the building and search for missing workers (Scenario 2: land and sea)

The ground and aerial robots perform a reconnaissance mission of the area and create a map of the surrounding area in order to increase the awareness of the emergency response team. Additionally, the robots find two missing workers outdoors and deploy first-aid kits near them.

1st Prize: IMM, Poland + IIS Piombino CVP, Italy

2nd Prize: Raptors Team, Poland

3rd Prize: Telerob, Germany + INESTEC/ISEP Aerial Robotics, Portugal

Pipe inspection and search for missing workers (Scenario 3: sea and air)

After the earthquake and tsunami, the pipes connecting the reactor to the sea might be leaking radioactive substances, therefore the emergency team has to find the damaged ones on land or underwater. Robots must find two missing workers: one outside the building, to whom an emergency kit should be deployed, and another one dragged by the tsunami to the sea, expected to be a casualty.

1st Prize: Universitat de Girona, Spain + INESTEC/ISEP Aerial Robotics, Portugal

2nd Prize: Tuscany Robotics Team, Italy

3rd Prize: AUV Tomkyle, Germany + HSR Search and Rescue Team, Switzerland

“Aerial robots have shown great improvements with respect to euRathlon 2015, most of them being fully operational from the first day of the competition. They have been able to quickly provide information about inaccessible areas, structural damages or other possible threats. As it happened with robots from the other two domains, aerial teams also struggled with communication issues to properly command and control their platforms. This further confirms the need for autonomous capabilities onboard the aerial robots, to become even more powerful tools for emergency response teams”, said Francisco Javier Pérez Grau from the Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies.

Stem the leak (Scenario 4: land and sea)

The land robots have to inspect the pipes in the building’s machine room and marine robots the underwater pipes in order to close the correct valves and prevent leakage. Land and marine robots must cooperate to identify the valves and synchronize the process of closing them, by communicating directly or via their operators.

1st Prize: Telerob, Germany + Universitat de Girona, Spain

2nd Prize: Raptors, Poland + Oubot, Hungary

3rd Prize: bebot, Switzerland + AUV Tomkyle Team, Germany

Winning teams were given a diploma, prize money and in-kind, sponsored by the Platinum Sponsor IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society, silver sponsors SBG systems and Texas Instruments.

In addition, Marta Palau Franco, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, ERL Emergency project manager introduced the referees’ special awards. Find out who the winners are here!

“This great event has been possible thanks to the work and effort of an amazing local organising team. Special thanks to Fausto Ferreira, the ERL Emergency 2017 Deputy Director, for his continuous support. I want to thank all the sponsors, especially our platinum sponsor IEEE OES, the project partners, referees, local associations and schools for their support. Huge thanks go to the participating teams, which were the heart of this great event. Their competitiveness pushed the robots to accomplish great results, nevertheless the competition has always been accompanied by fair play. I believe this is the perfect formula for team members to improve their professional and human skills”, said Gabriele Ferri, ERL Emergency 2017 Director.

 Watch the ERL Emergency 2017 Awards Ceremony video

More info

The European Robotics League is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement n° 688441.

The ERL Emergency Robots 2017 competition was organised locally by the NATO STO-Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) of La Spezia, Italy.

The European Robotics League is part of the SPARC public-private partnership set up by the European Commission and euRobotics to extend Europe’s leadership in civilian robotics. SPARC’s €700 million of funding from the Commission in 2014̶20 is being combined with €1.4 billion of funding from European industry. www.eu-robotics.net/sparc

euRobotics is a European Commission-funded non-profit organisation which promotes robotics research and innovation for the benefit of Europe’s economy and society. It is based in Brussels and has more than 250-member organisations.

www.eu-robotics.net

In addition to the Competition Awards, Marta Palau Franco from Bristol Robotics Laboratory and ERL Emergency project manager introduced the referees’ special awards.

“Behind a multi-domain competition there is always a large technical committee, I feel privileged to have worked with such an amazing team of volunteer referees, technical assistants and safety pilots and divers. We were delighted to give these awards to recognise teams’ effort, fair play and hard work. The experience of participating in this robotics competition will prove beneficial for team members to develop further their professional career”, said Marta Palau Franco.

Mapping Award, handed by Vladimir Djapic from AFAK, for good quality georeferenced undersea mapping.
Winner: AUV Team Tomkyle, Germany (sea)

Navigation Award, handed by Pino Casalino from the University of Genova, for the effort to change and adapt algorithms to navigate without a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) sensor, important for the AUV (autonomous Undersea Vehicle) navigation.
Winner: Oubot Team, Hungary (sea)

Fair Play Award, handed by Marta Palau Franco from the University of the West of England, Bristol, for lending to the Tuscany Robotics Team a wheel platform for their new robot and for lending the batteries of their aerial robot to ISEP/INESC TEC aerial team.
Winners: ENSTA Team and ENSTA Bretagne, France (land, air, sea)

Creativity Award, handed by Bernd Bruggermann from Fraunhofer FKIE, for building a land robot from scratch in less than two days when their ground platform broke.
Winner: Tuscany Robotics, Italy (land, air, sea)

Multi-domain Cooperation Award, handed by Fausto Ferreira from CMRE, for cooperation between domains. The teams used a graphical interface in which each robot from sea and air domain reported its findings in the competition arena in real-time.
Winner: Universitat de Girona, Spain (sea) + ISEP/INESC TEC, Portugal (air)

Perseverance Award, handed by Francisco Javier Perez Grau from FADA-CATEC, for hard work on the development and integration of the aerial robot. The team competed in the Grand Challenge the day after their aerial platform suffered a severe crash, working overnight to fix it.
Winner: HSR Search and Rescue Team, Switzerland (air)

Piloting Award, handed by Stjepan Bogdan from University of Zagreb-FER , for outstanding UAV piloting skills. The team was able to recover the aerial robot after an unintentional landing without incurring manual intervention.
Winner: Raptors, Poland (land & air)

Autonomy Award, handed by Frank Schneider from Fraunhofer FKIE, for the best autonomy of land robots. Outstanding autonomous navigation and automatic object detection.
Winner: IMM, Poland (land)

SAUC-E Student Award – handed by Bill Kirkwood (IEEE OES), Kelly Cooper (ONR) and Hitesh Patel (AUVSI) to the best student marine team.
Winner: AUV Team Tomkyle, Germany (sea)

Teams were given a diploma and set of eZ430-Chronos development tool sponsored by Texas Instruments.

Watch the ERL Emergency 2017 Awards Ceremony video

More info

The European Robotics League is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement n° 688441.

The ERL Emergency Robots 2017 competition was organised locally by the NATO STO-Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) of La Spezia, Italy.

Welcome to #ERLemergency village pic.twitter.com/wQlIHDfhJg

— Alexandre Chapoutot (@YATheChap) 15 September 2017

Robot da tutto il mondo si danno appuntamento all’#ERLemergency #Robots. A Piombino da oggi al 23/09 @ERLrobotleague https://t.co/4h1btIlln1 pic.twitter.com/7L0Lo4wTjz

— Enel Group (@EnelGroupIT) 15 September 2017

Teams worked very hard during the practice and competition days:

First tests completed by #ENSTATeam in the @ERLrobotleague pic.twitter.com/rcWQdRHAfw

— Servane Courtaux (@servane_crtx) 16 September 2017

Tuscany Robotics Team pic.twitter.com/BFo2mnb7B7

— Benedetto Allotta (@BenAllotta) 22 September 2017

Some field repairs for team Raptors @ERLrobotleague #ERLemergency while teams Oubot and Raptors continue air and sea operations. pic.twitter.com/LJ6Zphsu6Y

— Alan Winfield (@alan_winfield) 23 September 2017

Great to see many more women roboticists in #ERLemergency2017 teams than #eurathlon2015. See e.g. team #Piombino https://t.co/FsnC3e5ijN

— Alan Winfield (@alan_winfield) 25 September 2017

Land + Air day out here at #ERLemergency! @ERLrobotleague pic.twitter.com/DzZlcmnNWf

— AUVSI Foundation (@AUVSIFoundation) 20 September 2017

Robots could be found also in the exhibition area:

SWARMs at ERL 2017! #erlemergency #Piombino @SantAnnaPisahttps://t.co/ly8ciQQgh6 pic.twitter.com/anQ9Ck7knI

— SWARMs Project (@SWARMS_Project) 21 September 2017

Or enjoying the sea:

ETH Robot ANYmal likes the sea in Italy. pic.twitter.com/UsU3hUlKTD

— Roland Siegwart (@rsiegwart) 15 de septiembre de 2017

Robotics experts held presentations and demos for the general public during the Opening Ceremony in Piazza Bovio.

The Opening ceremony of #Erlemergency 2017 @ERLrobotleague has started in Piombino #robots pic.twitter.com/SGqVLGL2Xn

— euRobotics (@eu_Robotics) 17 September 2017

.@mady_delvaux: European #robotics research is performing well, robots will impact human life, #erlemergency2017 is a positive example pic.twitter.com/gciEjcS0XW

— SPARC robotics (@SPARCrobotics) 17 September 2017

The public got to know the teams,

Let’s support the #erlemergency2017 teams! pic.twitter.com/5XbsegCATB

— SPARC robotics (@SPARCrobotics) 17 September 2017

And to see some emergency robots in action with the demo of TRADR project:

Robots will complement people, not take their jobs, says TRADR project #erlemergency2017 https://t.co/K3KOP8umVN

— SPARC robotics (@SPARCrobotics) 17 September 2017

The competition site benefitted from the visit of some personalities:

Il sindaco di Piombino @massimogiu a #ERLemergency 2017 a Tor del Sale “Manifestazione positiva per la città che vuole guardare al futuro” pic.twitter.com/xMOW9zs1Hw

— Comune di Piombino (@ComunePiombino) 22 September 2017

We are delighted to have Bill Kirkwood from our Platinum Sponsor @ieeeoes at #ERLemergency2017. Many thanks for sponsoring us! pic.twitter.com/27zsP66Xsz

— ERL robotics league (@ERLrobotleague) 23 September 2017

Since they are the new generation of roboticists, children were not forgotten either: they enjoyed the free classes given by Scuola di Robotica.

Enjoy the #robotics class for children in #Piombino #ERLemergency2017 @EmanueleMicheli pic.twitter.com/1nEB4LDcEZ

— euRobotics (@eu_Robotics) 17 September 2017

At the Piombino Castle, the public attended more #robotics presentations.

Anne Bajart @RoboticsEU presented EU funded #robotics projects @CLsPlusPlus #erlemergency2017 #Piombino pic.twitter.com/RnTbCeIIl9

— ERL robotics league (@ERLrobotleague) 18 September 2017

After days of hard work, passion and enjoyment, the winners of the Grand challenge were announced:

The winners of #ERLemergency2017 Grand Challenge are Telerob+Universitat de Girona + ISEP/INESC TEC. Congratulations! pic.twitter.com/Y89BvQhJ5x

— ERL robotics league (@ERLrobotleague) 23 September 2017

We want to share with you our recent breakthrough teaching drones to fly using an eye-inspired camera, which opens the door to them performing fast, agile maneuvers and flying in low-light environments, where all commercial drones fail. Possible applications include supporting rescue teams with search missions at dusk or dawn. We submitted this work to the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

How it works
Event cameras are bio-inspired vision sensors that output pixel-level brightness changes instead of standard intensity frames. They do not suffer from motion blur and have a very high dynamic range, which enables them to provide reliable visual information during high speed motions or in scenes characterized by high dynamic range. However, event cameras output only little information when the amount of motion is limited, such as in the case of almost still motion. Conversely, standard cameras provide instant and rich information about the environment most of the time (in low-speed and good lighting scenarios), but they fail severely in case of fast motions or difficult lighting such as high dynamic range or low light scenes. In this work, we present the first state estimation pipeline that leverages the complementary advantages of these two sensors by fusing in a tightly-coupled manner events, standard frames, and inertial measurements. We show that our hybrid pipeline leads to an accuracy improvement of 130% over event-only pipelines, and 85% over standard-frames only visual-inertial systems, while still being computationally tractable. Furthermore, we use our pipeline to demonstrate—to the best of our knowledge—the first autonomous quadrotor flight using an event camera for state estimation, unlocking flight scenarios that were not reachable with traditional visual inertial odometry, such as low-light environments and high dynamic range scenes: we demonstrate how we can even fly in low light (such as after switching completely off the light in a room) or scenes characterized by a very high dynamic range (one side of the room highly illuminated and another side of the room dark).

Paper:
T. Rosinol Vidal, H.Rebecq, T. Horstschaefer, D. Scaramuzza
Hybrid, Frame and Event based Visual Inertial Odometry for Robust, Autonomous Navigation of Quadrotors, submitted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters PDF

This week we’re featuring Mike’s interview with Chris Anderson, Co-Founder and CEO of 3D Robotics. Chris is a former Wired magazine editor turned robotics company co-founder and CEO. Learn about Chris’s amazing journey into the world of unmanned aerial vehicles.

You can find all the interviews here. We’ll be posting them regularly on Robohub.

The field of drone delivery is currently a big topic in robotics. However, the reason that your internet shopping doesn’t yet arrive via drone is that current flying robots can prove a safety risk to people and are difficult to transport and store.

A team from the Floreano Lab, NCCR Robotics and EPFL present a new type of cargo drone that is inspired by origami, is lightweight and easily manoeuvrable and uses a foldaway cage to ensure safety and transportability.

A foldable protective cage sits around a multicopter and around the package to be carried, shielding spinning propellers and ensuring safety of all people around it. When the folding cage is opened in order to either load or unload the drone, a safety mechanism ensures that the engine is cut off, meaning that safety is ensured, even with completely untrained users.

But where this drone takes a step forward is in the folding cage, ensuring that it can be easily stowed away and transported. The team took inspiration from the origami folding shelters that have been developed for space exploration and adapted them to create a chinese lantern shape, and instead of using paper, a skeletal structure is created using carbon fibre tubes and 3D printed flexible joints. The cage is opened and closed using a joint mechanism on the top and bottom and pushing apart the resulting gap – in fact, both opening and closing of the cage and be performed in just 1.2 seconds.

By adding such a cage to a multicopter, the team ensure safety for those who come into contact with the drone. The drone can be caught while it’s flying, meaning that it can deliver to people caught in places where landing is hard or even impossible, such as a collapsed building during search and rescue missions, where first aid, medication, water or food may need to be delivered quickly.

Currently, the drone is able to carry 0.5 kg cargo for 2 km, and any visitors to EPFL over this summer would have noticed it being used to transport small items across campus 150 times, but it is hoped that by scaling, it may be able to carry as much as 2 kg over 15 km, a weight and distance that would allow for longer distance deliveries.

Reference:
P.M. Kornatowski, S. Mintchev, and D. Floreano, “An origami-inspired cargo drone”, in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2017.

Metallica’s European WorldWired tour, which opened to an ecstatic crowd of 15,000 in Copenhagen’s sold-out Royal Arena this Saturday, features a swarm of micro drones flying above the band. Shortly after the band breaks into their hit single “Moth Into Flame”, dozens of micro drones start emerging from the stage, forming a large rotating circle above the stage. As the music builds, more and more drones emerge and join the formation, creating increasingly complex patterns, culminating in a choreography of three interlocking rings that rotate in position.

This show’s debut marks the world’s first autonomous drone swarm performance in a major touring act. Unlike previous drone shows, this performance features indoor drones, flying above performers and right next to throngs of concert viewers in a live event setting. Flying immediately next to audiences creates a more intimate effect than outdoor drone shows. The same closeness also allows the creation of moving, three-dimensional sculptures like the ones seen in the video — an effect further enhanced by Metallica’s 360-degree stage setup, with concert viewers on all sides.

Flying drones close to and around people in such a setting is challenging. Unlike outdoors, indoor drones cannot rely on GPS signals, which are severely degraded in indoor settings and do not offer the required accuracy for autonomous drone navigation on stage. The safety aspects of flying dozens of drones close to crowds in the high-pressure, live-event environment impose further challenges. Robustness to the uncertainties caused by changing show conditions in a touring setting as well as variation in the drone systems’ components and sensors, including the hundreds of motors powering the drones, is another necessary condition for this drone show system.

“It’s all about safety and reliability first”, says Raffaello D’Andrea, founder of the company behind the drones used in the Metallica show, Verity Studios (full disclosure: I’m a co-founder). D’Andrea knows what he is talking about: In work with his previous company, which was snatched up by e-commerce giant Amazon for an eye-watering 775M USD in 2012, D’Andrea and his team created fleets of autonomous warehousing robots, moving inventory through the warehouse around the clock. That company, which has since been renamed Amazon Robotics, now operates up to 10,000 robots — in a single warehouse.

How was this achieved?

In a nutshell: Verity Studios’ drone show system is an advanced show automation system that uses distributed AI, robotics, and sophisticated algorithms to achieve the level of robust performance and safety required by the live entertainment industry. With a track record of >7,000 autonomous flights on Broadway, achieved with its larger Stage Flyer drones during 398 live shows, Verity Studios is no newcomer to this industry.

Many elements are needed to create a touring drone show; the drones themselves are just one aspect. Verity’s drones are autonomous, supervised by a human operator, who does not control drone motions individually. Instead, the operator only issues high-level commands such as “takeoff” or “land”, monitors the motions of multiple drones at a time, and reacts to anomalies. In other words, Verity’s advanced automation system takes over the role of multiple human pilots that would be required with standard, remote-controlled drones. The drones are flying mobile robots that navigate autonomously, piloting themselves, under human supervision. The autonomous drones’ motions and their lighting design are choreographed by Verity’s creative staff.

To navigate autonomously, drones require a reliable method for determining their position in space. As mentioned above, while drones can use GPS for their autonomous navigation in an outdoor setting, GPS is not a viable option indoors: GPS signals degrade close to large structures (e.g., tall buildings) and are usually not available, or severely degraded, in indoor environments. Since degraded GPS may result in unreliable or unsafe conditions for autonomous flight, the Verity drones use proprietary indoor localization technology.

System architecture of Verity Studios’ drone show system used in Metallica’s WorldWired tour, comprising positioning modules part of Verity’s indoor localization technology, autonomous drones, and an operator control station.

It is the combination of a reliable indoor positioning system with intelligent autonomous drones and a suitable operator interface that allows the single operator of the Metallica show to simultaneously control the coordinated movement of many drones. This pilot-less approach is not merely a matter of increasing efficiency and effectiveness (who wants to have dozens of pilots on staff), but also a key safety requirement: Pilot errors have been an important contributing factor in dozens of documented drone accidents at live events. Safety risks rapidly increase as the number of drones increases, resulting in more complex flight plans and higher risks of mid-air collisions. Autonomous control allows safer operation of multiple drones than remote control by human pilots, especially when operating in a reduced airspace envelope.

Verity’s system also had to be engineered for safety in spite of other potential failures, including wireless interference, hardware or software component failures, power outages, or malicious disruption/hacking attacks. In its 398-show run on Broadway, the biggest challenge to safety turned out to be another factor: Human error. While operated by theater staff on Broadway, Verity’s system correctly identified human errors on five occasions and prevented the concerned drones from taking flight (on these occasions, the show continued with six or seven instead of the show’s planned eight drones; only one show proceeded without any drones as a safety precaution, i.e., the drone show’s “uptime” was 99.7%). As my colleagues and I have outlined in a recently published overview document on best practices for drone shows, when using drones at live event safety is a hard requirement.

Another key element for Verity’s show creation process are drone authoring tools. Planning shows like the Metallica performance requires tools for the efficient creation of trajectories for large numbers of drones. The trajectories must account for the drones’ actual flight dynamics, considering actuator limitations, as well as for aerodynamic effects, such as air turbulence or lift. Drone motions generated by these tools need to be collision-free and allow for emergency maneuvers. To create compelling effects, drone authoring tools also need to allow extracting all of the dynamic performance the drones are capable of — another area that D’Andrea’s team has gained considerable experience with prior to founding Verity Studios, in this case as part of research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Flying Machine Arena.

Creating a compelling drone show requires more than the drone show system itself. For this tour, Verity Studios partnered with the world’s leading stage automation company TAIT Towers to integrate the drones into the stage floor as well as tackling a series of other technical challenges related to this touring show.

While technology is the key enabler, the starting point and the key driver of Verity’s shows are non-technological. Instead, the show is driven by the show designers’ creative intent. This comprises defining the role of show drones for the performance at hand as well as determining their integration into the visual and musical motifs of the show’s creative concept. For Metallica, the drones’ flight trajectories and lighting were created by Verity’s choreography team, incorporating feedback from Metallica’s production team and the band.

Metallica’s WorldWired tour
Metallica’s WorldWired Tour is their first worldwide tour after the World Magnetic Tour six years ago. The tour’s currently published European leg runs until 11 May 2018, with all general tickets sold out.

Further Robohub reading

• Drone shows: Creative potential and best practices
• Ben Einstein’s great tear-down of D’Andrea’s Amazon robots (although I disagree with Ben’s conclusion that the bots are “cooler than a flying drone” … maybe Ben hasn’t seen Verity’s Lucie drones yet? You be the judge.)
• Verity’s 7,000 autonomous drone flights on Broadway

Some images for your viewing pleasure

James Hetfield with Verity’s drones

Verity’s drones swarming below TAIT’s LED cubes

A glimpse at the 15,000-strong audience of the sold-out concert

A U.S. Marine tests an Instant Eye drone during exercises on August 18 in Virginia. Credit: Lance Cpl. Michaela R. Gregory

August 14, 2017 – August 20, 2017

News

During a nighttime flight in the Persian Gulf, an Iranian surveillance drone followed a U.S. aircraft carrier and came within 300 feet of a U.S. fighter jet. It was the second time in a week that an Iranian drone interfered with U.S. Navy operations in the Gulf. In a statement, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said that its drones were operated “accurately and professionally.” (Associated Press)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

A report by the RAND Corporation argues that distributed, localized drone hubs can reduce energy consumption for drone delivery programs in urban centers. (StateScoop)

At the Economist, Tom Standage writes that toys like hobby drones can “sometimes give birth to important technologies.”

At the Atlantic, Naomi Nix looks at how the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative is investing in programs that teach students how to build and operate drones.

At Aviation Week, David Hambling examines the growing demand for small, pocket-sized military drones.

At Slate, Faine Greenwood argues that the U.S. military should not use consumer drones.

At the Los Angeles Times, W.J. Hennigan reports that U.S. drones are performing danger-close strikes in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

At TechCrunch, Jon Hegranes separates the “fiction from feasibility” of drone deliveries.

At DefenseNews, Adam Stone looks at how the U.S. Navy is investing in a command-and-control system with an eye to someday operating drones from carriers.  

At the Modern War Institute, Dan Maurer considers whether military ethics and codes should apply to robot soldiers.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Benny Evangelista considers recent reports of close encounters between drones and manned aircraft.

At War is Boring, Robert Beckhusen writes that the Israeli military is investigating allegations that an Israeli drone manufacturer carried out a drone strike against Armenian soldiers as part of a product demonstration.

At Popular Mechanics, David Hambling considers whether an armed quadrotor drone is ethical or even practical.

At Washington Technology, Ross Wilkers looks into Boeing’s push to become a leader in the field of autonomous weapons systems.

Know Your Drone

Israeli firm Meteor Aerospace is developing a medium-altitude long-endurance surveillance and reconnaissance drone. (FlightGlobal)

Following the U.S. Army’s decision to discontinue use of its products, Chinese drone maker DJI is speeding the development of a security system that allows users to disconnect drones from DJI’s servers while in flight. (The New York Times)

Huntington Ingalls Industries demonstrated its Proteus dual-mode unmanned undersea vehicle at an exercise held by the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center. (Jane’s)

A team from the University of Sherbrooke is developing a fixed-wing drone that uses thrust to achieve perched landings. (IEEE Spectrum)

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is developing a fuel cell-powered drone called Hybrid Tiger that could have an endurance of up to three days. (Jane’s)

China’s Beijing Sifang Automation is developing an autonomous unmanned boat called SeaFly, which it hopes will be ready for production by the end of the year. (Jane’s)

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency unveiled the Assured Autonomy program, which seeks to build better trustworthiness into a range of military unmanned systems. (Shephard Media)

Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology unveiled an anti-radiation loitering munition drone. (Shephard Media)

Amazon has patented a retractable tube that can be used to funnel packages from delivery drones to the ground. (Puget Sound Business Journal)

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart has been awarded a patent for a floating warehouse that could be used to carry goods for drone deliveries. (CNBC)

Telecommunications company AT&T is looking to develop autonomous systems to make drones more efficient for cell tower inspections. (Unmanned Aerial Online)  

Drones at Work

The U.S. Forest Service used a drone to to collect data over the Minerva Fire in the Plumas National Forest. (Unmanned Aerial Online)

A team of researchers from Oklahoma State University and the University of Nebraska are planning to use drones to study atmospheric conditions during the upcoming solar eclipse. (Popular Science)

In a test, U.S. drone maker General Atomics flew its new Grey Eagle Extended Range drone for 42 hours. (Jane’s)

In a U.S. Navy exercise, an MQ-8B Fire Scout helicopter drone was handed off between control stations while in flight. (Shephard Media)

A U.S. MQ-1 Predator drone crashed shortly after taking off from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. (Military.com)

The Michigan Department of Corrections announced that three people have been arrested after attempting to use a drone to smuggle drugs and a cellphone into a prison in the city of Ionia. (New York Post)

Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents in San Diego, California arrested a man for allegedly flying a drone laden with drugs over the U.S.-Mexico border. (The San Diego Tribune)

A medevac helicopter responding to a fatal car crash in Michigan had to abort its first landing attempt at the scene because a drone was spotted flying over the area. (MLive)

NASA plans to once again use its Global Hawk high-altitude drone to study severe storms over the Pacific this hurricane season. (International Business Times)

Police in Glynn County, Georgia used a drone to search for a suspect fleeing in a marshy area. (Florida Times-Union)

The Regina Police Service Traffic Unit in Canada is acquiring drones to collect data over collision scenes. (Global News)

A photo essay at the National Review examines quadrotor drones at work in both civilian and military spheres.

Industry Intel

DefenseNews reports that General Atomics is hoping to sell around 90 Avenger drones, the successor to the Reaper, to an unnamed international customer.

The Ohio Federal Research Network is behind a $7 million initiative to make Ohio a center for drone research. (Dayton Daily News)

The U.K.’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory awarded Qinetiq a $5.8 million contract to lead the Maritime Autonomous Platform Exploitation project. (Shephard Media)

Insitu has partnered with FireWhat and Esri to provide firefighters with improved aerial intelligence. (Shephard Media)

3DR, Global Aerospace, and Harpenau Insurance have partnered to offer businesses drone insurance that covers legal liability and physical damage. (TechRepublic)

Aerialtronics, a Dutch industrial drone maker, announced that it has applied for a solvency procedure and will seek new investors. (Press Release)

The U.S. Navy awarded Insitu a $7.5 million foreign military sales contract for six ScanEagle drones for the Philippines. (DoD)

 The U.S. Navy awarded Insitu a $319,886 contract for the procurement of Strongback Module Assemblies.

The U.S. Air Force awarded Area I a $5 million contract for the development of air-launched drones. (FBO)

The U.S. Army awarded Gird Systems a $148,364 contract for squad-level counter-drone technology. (FBO)

The U.S. Army awarded Airspace Systems a $1.9 million contract for autonomous drone defense. (FBO)

The U.S. Army awarded RPX Technologies a $147,905 contract for a micro IR thermal imaging camera for nano-UAVs. (FBO)

The U.S. Department of Interior awarded Brocktek a $65,000 contract for 3DR Solo drones. (FBO)  

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

PARAMOUR on Broadway – A Cirque du Soleil Musical. Credit: Richard Termine

Last year, Intel partnered with Lady Gaga on the Super Bowl Halftime Show to showcase its latest aerial technology called “Shooting Star.” Intel did a reprise performance of its Shooting Star technology for Singapore’s 52nd birthday this past week. Instead of fireworks, the tech-savvy country celebrated its National Day Parade with a swarm of 300 LED drones animating the night sky with shapes, logos, and even a map of the country.

Intel’s global drone chief, Anil Nanduri, explained, “There’s considerably more operational complexity in handling a 300 drone fleet, compared with 100 drones in a show. It’s like juggling balls in your hand. You may be able to juggle three, but if you juggle nine, you may have to throw them higher and faster to get more time.” Earlier this year, Intel first showcased its 300 drone show at Coachella music festival on the heels of claiming the Guinness World Record of a 500 drone performance.

Choreographed drones are winning the hearts of Cirque du Soleil theatergoers with a fleet of flying acrobatic vehicles dancing around its human performers. These drones are the brain child of Professor Raffaello D’Andrea of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland and his new startup Verity Studios. D’Andrea is probably best known as one of the three founders of Kiva Systems and now he is taking the same machine intelligence that sorts and delivers goods within Amazon’s warehouses to safely wow audiences worldwide.  The flying lampshades (shown in the video below) are actually autonomous drones that magically synchronize with the dancers, without safety nets or human operators.

Verity’s customer, Cirque du Soleil’s Chief Creative Officer Jean-Francois Bouchard, said D’Andrea’s “flying machines are unquestionably one of the most important statements of the PARAMOUR show.” The key to the flying machines’ success over 7,000 autonomous flights on Broadway is its proprietary technologies that enable multiple self-piloted drones to be synchronized within flight. Verity’s drone is part of a larger performance system called “Stage Flyers.”

The Stage Flyer platform has proven itself in the field, flying next to thousands of people each evening by having built-in redundancy to any single failure. According to Verity’s website, the system is “capable of continuing operation in spite of a failed battery, a failed motor, a failed connector, a failed propeller, a failed sensor, or a failure of any other component. This is achieved through the duplication of critical components and the use of proprietary algorithms, which enable safe emergency responses to component failures.” This means that the drones can operate safely around audiences and performers alike, carrying payloads of cameras, mirrors, and special lighting effects. As shown in the above diagram, the drone system includes a fleet of self-piloted drones that utilize one positioning system and control unit. The company boasts that its system only takes a few hours to install, calibrate and learn how to operate.

Drone swarms are not just for entertainment, as today there are a number of upstarts and established players utilizing these mechanics for e-commerce fulfillment centers. Last June, Amazon was issued a patent for a “Multi-Level Fulfillment Center for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.” The beehive-looking distribution center (above) is designed to facilitate traffic between inbound and outbound delivery drones. The patent illustration details “multiple levels with multiple landing and take-off locations, depending on local zoning regulations.”

This is all part of Amazon’s larger plan to grow its robotic workforce over the next two to three years. Instead of human truck drivers, the patent displays delivery bays that open and close automatically based on the direction of the drones and interior platforms that cycle around the hive. CB Insights reports that the patent describes “impact dampeners,” such as nets, for receiving inbound drones and “launch assist mechanisms,” such as fans, for launching outbound drones. It appears that Amazon will be looking again to technology like D’Andrea’s research to revolutionize its global network of warehouses with synchronized swarms of drones that safely soar above human workers.

Amazon’s competitor Walmart announced last summer its plans to utilize swarms of indoor drones for inventory management, replacing the need for people climbing dangerous ladders to manually scan labels. The New York Times first reported last July that the retailer applied for a FAA exemption to begin testing drones inside its massive distribution centers. Shekar Natarajan, the vice president of last mile and emerging science for Walmart, demonstrated for the newspaper how swarms of drones could easily move up and down aisles, from floor to ceiling, to scan 30 barcode images a second (an efficiency that would be impossible for even the most agile humans). Walmart has publicly boasted that it will spend close to $3 billion on new technology and other cost-saving investments to bolster its e-commerce business which is growing, but at a slower pace than its nemesis Amazon.

The race to dominate the warehouse has led to increased investments in the logistics sector and even an accelerator dedicated solely to technology around distribution centers. Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Dynamo Accelerator showcased last May its second cohort of startups. One of the most successful showings was Chicago-based Corvus Robotics, a software company that uses indoor aerial drones to scan inventory (similar to the Walmart example above). According to Dynamo’s managing directors, Corvus is building enabling tools that allow operators to fly drones autonomously, scan & sync barcodes, and enter the SKU data into the existing warehouse management system.

Santosh Sankar, the director at Dynamo, explained his accelerator’s mission succinctly in a recent blog post: “We believe our focus and hands-on approach is one of our value-adds. As such, we’re leaning into being seed investors and upholding our commitment to transforming our industry by focusing on our founders and our corporate partners. We’ve opted to not hold a quota for our programs and hone in on companies we can truly help because that ultimately makes for good seed investments.” Sankar added that several of the program participants “are already well on their way to generate ($1 million or more) in annual revenue and/or have raised their initial round of capital.”

Corvus may be the latest indoor drone startup to enter an already crowded warehouse market, which includes established players like the Hardis Group, Smartx, and DJI. Drones continue to amuse, amaze and evolve as the growing need for more unmanned systems in our lives appears to be almost insatiable. Next month, we plan to dig deeper into the drone market with our RobotLabNYC event series on September 19th at 6pm in WeWork Grand Central. Joining us in the discussions include thought-leaders from NASA, AUVSI, and Genius NY, RSVP today, as space is limited.

Australia retired the IAI Heron drone after eight years of service. The Royal Australian Air Force is currently seeking a replacement. Image via Aviation Analysis Wing

August 7, 2017 – August 13, 2017

News

Two U.S. airstrikes targeted members of al-Shabab in Somalia. In a statement, the U.S. Africa Command said the strikes were “conducted within the parameters of the proposal approved by the President in March 2017.” A spokesperson said the strikes were carried out by drones. (ABC News)

In a classified guidance issued last month, the Department of Defense authorized the U.S. military to seize or destroy drones that appear to endanger the airspace or pose a threat to military installations. Pentagon spokesperson Captain Jeff Davis told reporters that the move was a response to the “increase of commercial and private drones” in the U.S. (Reuters)

An Iranian drone interfered with a U.S. F/A-18E Super Hornet jet in the Persian Gulf. In a statement, the U.S. military said that the drone flew within 100 feet of the manned fighter as it was preparing to land on the USS Nimitz. (Washington Post)

Turkish authorities have detained a Russian citizen with ties to ISIS for allegedly planning to use a drone to attack a U.S. military base. Police in Adana claim that Renad Bakiev admitted to reconnoitering Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. (Associated Press)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At the Financial Times, Louise Lucas writes that China-based drone manufacturer DJI is considering making a move toward the commercial sector.

At C4ISRNet, Jen Dunham argues that hiring more analysts won’t help the U.S. military analyze all the data from drones.

A report by CorpWatch examines the contractors and technologies that underpin U.S. military drone operations.

At Defense Tech, Oriana Pawlyk writes that U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones are taking on more missions in Afghanistan.

At Air and Space Magazine, Tim Wright considers how recent events have impacted DJI’s brand image.

At Popular Science, Kelsey D. Atherton looks at why the U.S. Army recently issued a ban on DJI drones.

Also at Popular Science, Kendra Pierre-Louis looks at how the U.S. Forest Service is working to dissuade drone users from flying over wildfires.

At 9News, Mike Dalton profiles Carbonix, an Australian company that makes lightweight airframes for drones.

At the Wichita Eagle, Jerry Siebenmark looks at how drone companies in Kansas are adapting to changes in the drone industry.

ABC News visited a U.S. police department’s training facility to see how drones are aiding law enforcement operations.

At Defense News, David B. Larter writes that the U.S. Navy is exploring ways of using drones and artificial intelligence to repair damaged airfields.

At Offiziere, Paul Iddon writes that Turkey is moving to step up production of armed drones.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board argues that the Los Angeles County Sheriff should adopt a more transparent process for integrating drones into police work.

At the Wall Street Journal, Nicole Friedman writes that insurance companies are increasingly relying on drones to inspect physical damage to properties.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Carolyn Said looks at how robots and drones are taking on more roles in food delivery.

At WFTV, Lauren Seabrook writes that a new state law in Florida that offers more opportunities for drone businesses conflicts with local drone ordinances.

At Drone Law Blog, Jonathan Rupprecht offers the pros and cons of the proposed Drone Operator Safety Act of 2017.

Know Your Drone

Kratos Defense and Security Solutions announced that a classified military drone that it is developing for an unnamed program will enter into production this year. (FlightGlobal)

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems has modified its Fencepost acoustic surveillance system to function as a counter-drone device. (Aviation Week)

Northrop Grumman is using an X-47B drone as a testbed for the Navy’s MQ-25A Stingray aerial refueling drone. (Aviation Week) For more on the X-47B, click here.

Drones at Work

A drone hobbyist in Scotland managed to land an off-the-shelf consumer drone on the deck of the Royal Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth, a modern aircraft carrier. (The Telegraph)

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission approved a policy to use drones for construction management, environmental monitoring, and inspection. (San Francisco Examiner)

The Worldview International Foundation is planning to use drones to plant tree seeds as part of a reforestation effort in Myanmar. (Fast Company)

The Kansas Department of Transportation and app maker AirMap are partnering to develop a drone air traffic management system. (The Wichita Eagle)

China is operating a dozen unmanned undersea vehicles for scientific observations in the South China Sea. (CNBC)

An Indian Air Force drone crashed during a flight over the Kathua district. (Indian Express)

Researchers from Cornell are using drones to measure surface reflectivity on the landscape as a means of studying climate change. (Phys.org)

The local government in Tamil Nadu is planning to use mapping drones for a flood mitigation project. (The Hindu)

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the Daytona Beach Police Department are partnering to develop a police drone program. (Drone Life)

The Israeli Defence Ministry is investigating reports that defense firm Aeronautics was asked by Azerbaijan to carry out a live demonstration of a loitering munition drone against Armenian forces. (Jerusalem Post)

The Muriwai Surf Life Saving Club in New Zealand is planning to use drones for patrolling a popular beach. (News Hub)

Researchers who used a drone last year to collect pollutant samples from the open burning of waste at an Army ammunition facility in Virginia found arsenic and other pollutants. (Phys.org)

The Royal Australian Air Force has retired its Heron surveillance and reconnaissance drone. (Shephard Media)

The U.S. Air Force announced that it will participate in “ThunderDrone,” a competition to develop new drone capabilities. (DefenseNews)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Army awarded Lockheed Martin a $12.9 million contract for work on the Squad X Experimentation program. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Dragonfly Pictures a $2.84 million contract for research into unmanned maritime systems. (FBO)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Pretalen a $149,698 contract for ADS-B for unmanned aircraft operations. (FBO)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Raytheon a $25.9 million contract for upgrades to the sensors onboard the RQ-4 Global Hawk. (UPI)

The U.S. Air Force awarded KeyW a $24 million contract for research into Multi-Sensor Multi-Domain Fusion. (Press Release)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Endeavor Robotics a contract for 32 small unmanned ground vehicles.  (Shephard Media)

Drone Aviation, a Florida-based manufacturer of tethered drones, raised $4 million in funding. (Press Release)  

CB Insights identified the top 15 early-stage drone startups according to disclosed funding levels.

FlyNex, a German drone startup, reported closed a seven-figure seed funding round. (Finsmes)

Boston-based Altaeros raised $7.5 million in funding from SoftBank Group to use tethered aerostats to bring broadband wireless to rural areas. (TechCrunch)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

The EMILY lifesaver drone. Credit: Hydronalix

July 31, 2017 – August 6, 2017

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At the Center for the Study of the Drone

In an interview with OpenGov, Center for the Study of the Drone co-director Arthur Holland Michel discusses the main trendlines in the ongoing evolution of drone technology.

News

A U.S. drone strike in Somalia reportedly killed a member of al-Shabab. In a statement, the U.S. Africa Command said that the strike took place in the Lower Shabelle region, an al-Shabab stronghold. (Associated Press)

The Trump administration is reviewing a drone exports policy established by the Obama administration. According to an official who spoke to DefenseNews, the review is part of a broader effort to find “smarter new approaches to U.S. defense trade policy.” The Obama administration placed controls on drone technology exports to U.S. allies in 2015.

A small tethered drone will help the U.S. Secret Service provide perimeter security during President Trump’s visit to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey this month. In an announcement, the agency said that the test is part of an initiative to explore new technologies for security operations. (Reuters)

Citing cyber vulnerabilities, the U.S. Army has instructed its units to discontinue the use of all drones made by DJI, the popular Chinese manufacturer. The decision appears to have been based on a classified study and a Navy memo on security issues in DJI products. (Reuters)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At Wired, officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency discuss the history of the DARPA Grand Challenge, a groundbreaking robotics competition.  

At an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Naval Institute, Adm. Paul Zukunft discussed the Coast Guard’s history with drone acquisition and operations. (USNI News)

At the BBC, Paul Marks looks at how law enforcement agencies in the U.K. identify and investigate rogue drone users.

At the Ringer, Kate Knibbs considers how police departments in the U.S. are using robots.

At the Middle East Institute, Dennis M. Gormley argues that the Trump administration should continue President Obama’s push to regulate armed drones.

At the Diplomat, Tobias Burgers and Scott N. Romaniuk consider how China’s new maritime loitering munition represents an evolution in drone technology.

Know Your Drone

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has made a number of upgrades to its CH-4 Rainbow surveillance and strike drone. (IHS Jane’s International Defence Review)

A team of security researchers has demonstrated that sonic blasts can be used to hack a number of electronic devices, including drones. (Fox News)

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Zurich University of the Arts have developed a hexacopter with independently rotating propellers that is capable of flying in far more acrobatic ways than traditional multirotor drones. (Yanko Design)

The University of Michigan has announced that it is developing an outdoor flight testing facility for drones. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

In a project for DARPA, engineering firm Draper and a team from MIT are developing drones that can navigate through complex environments without GPS. (Drone Life)

A team at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is developing an app-based management system for large military drones. (IHS Jane’s International Defence Review)

Following a 10-month definition process, the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation has decided that its European Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance drone will have a twin turboprop design. (IHS Jane’s International Defence Review)

Ukraine’s SpetsTechnoExport has conducted a weapons test of its Fantom-2 unmanned ground vehicle. (IHS Jane’s International Defence Review)

U.S. firm Gryphon sensors has unveiled an unmanned traffic management system called Mobile Skylight. (UAS Magazine)

Drones at Work

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating an incident in which a drone was spotted near a runway at Newark International Airport. (USA Today)

China’s People’s Liberation Army confirmed that it is now operating the CH-901, a loitering munition drone. (Popular Science) For more on loitering munitions, click here.

The Duluth Fire Department in Minnesota is testing EMILY, an unmanned surface vehicle designed for saving stranded swimmers, with an eye to possibly acquiring the system to use on Lake Superior. (Grand Forks Herald)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) introduced a bill that makes it illegal to fly drones near airports without permission. (The Hill)

The Fort Wayne Police Department in Indiana has acquired two drones for a range of operations, including emergency response and environmental surveys. (News Sentinel)

Kentucky governor Matt Bevin has accused a local news channel of invading his privacy after it flew a drone over his private property. (CNET)

A team of researchers from University of Colorado Boulder and Black Swift Technologies are using fixed-wing drones to measure water moisture at a test irrigation farm. (Daily Camera)

The U.S. Army and the Army of the Republic of Macedonia are constructing a 300m-long runway for drones in the Krivolak Training Area. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

The North Dakota Air National Guard took delivery of its first new MQ-9 Reaper drone. (Associated Press)

The government of Zambia has begun using a Chinese CH-3 drone for surveying applications. (East Pendulum)

Israel has offered to teach special forces units in the Ghana Armed Forces how to use tactical surveillance drones. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

Jordan Temkin won first place at the Drone Racing League’s 2017 Allianz Circuit Season Finale for the second year in a row. (Drone360)

Google’s Project Wing is seeking approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority to test delivery drones. (Canberra Times)

Industry Intel

3D Robotics partnered with DJI to provide the 3DR Site Scan surveying tools to DJI drones. (Construction Dive)

Snap is reportedly negotiating to buy Zero Zero Robotics, the China-based manufacturer of the Hover Camera selfie drone, for between $150 and $200 million. (TechCrunch)  

Atlas Dynamics, a startup that builds carbon-fiber drones, raised $8 million. (Electronics 360)

Aerobotics, a South African startup that provides drones to agricultural users, raised nearly $600,000 in a seed-funding round led by 4Di Capital and Savannah Fund. (Venture Burn)

Exxaro, a South African mining company, contracted Rocketmine for drones that will create 3D photogrammetry models of mine stockpiles. (IT Web)

U.S. drone services company Measure acquired Pilatus Unmanned, a provider of custom drones for enterprise customers. (Press Release)

The U.S. Army awarded SRC an $11 million contract for electronic warfare improvements to the Small UAS Integrated Defeat System. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $19.9 million contract to identify solutions to “near-term emergent obsolescence issues” for the MQ-4C Triton. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $2.94 million contract for MQ-8 Fire Scout logistics and training sustainment. (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $263,762 contract to provide support for the MQ-8 Fire Scout UAS Tactical Control System. (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $213,134 contract to provide software to support the integration of the COBRA payload. (FBO)  

The U.S. Navy awarded Insitu a $13,661 contract to provide engineering support for the RQ-21A Blackjack shipboard testing. (FBO)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $3.35 million contract for an “energy innovative” and low cost small drone. (FBO)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded BAYSPEC a $44,530 contract for a hyperspectral imager that can be integrated onto a drone. (FBO)

DIUx awarded Photon-X a $2.26 million contract for counter-drone “passive real-time 3D sensors.” (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded 3R Robotics a $75,000 contract for virtual reality software. (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Endeavor Robotics a $32,003 contract for a controller for the Endeavor SUGV 310 EOD robot. (FBO)

Indonesia is in talks to buy armed drones from China. (Jane’s)

Singapore’s ST Electronics has purchased an Aveillant Gamekeeper counter-drone system, which it has installed in downtown Singapore. (Today Online)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter.

A U.S. Army soldier launches an RQ-11 Raven during an exercise in North Carolina on July 27. Credit: Staff Sgt. Andrew Lee/U.S. Air Force

July 24, 2017 – July 30, 2017

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Commentary, Analysis, and Art

In an in-depth article at Wired, Jessica Pishko chronicles the rise and fall of the drone startup Lily Robotics.

At Drone 360, Leah Froats uses data provided by the FAA to find out why certain Part 107 waiver requests are denied.

At the National Interest, Paul Scharre argues that drones are challenging international security norms.

Also at the National Interest, Lyle J. Goldstein looks at how the race for air and sea drones could intensify competition between the U.S. and China.

At the Redlands Daily Facts, Sandra Emerson writes that a local police department’s drone program is drawing concerns from residents.

Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times, Maya Lau writes that a civilian oversight board is pushing Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to stop flying its drones.

A study funded by the U.K. Department of Transport found that while airliner windshields could withstand a collision with a drone, other aircraft remain vulnerable. (Gov.UK)

In response to Transport’s report on drone impacts, a coalition of drone manufacturers pressed the government to release the data underpinning its findings. (BBC)

At Shephard News, Richard Thomas looks at how the commercial drone market continues to consolidate.

At Aviation Week, Graham Warwick contends that the development of future low-cost drones depends on the availability of low-cost engines.  

Also at Aviation Week, John Morris writes that the 2017 EAA AirVenture, the world’s largest air show, features drones and other new technologies.  

At Real Clear Defense, Robbin Laird examines the Navy’s approach to manned-unmanned teaming.

Researchers at Stanford University consider whether control of a drone swarm should be centralized or decentralized. (Phys.org)

At Lawfare, Elsa Kania looks at how China seeks to leverage civilian advances in artificial intelligence for military gain.

In the NATO Review magazine, Col. Gjert Lage Dyndal examines legal and ethical issues associated with autonomous weapons.  

At an event in Washington, Gen. David Goldfein said that the Air Force needs better artificial intelligence in order to improve intelligence collection. (DefenseTech)

At an Ars Live event, Lisa Ling discussed her role as a drone imagery analyst for the U.S. Air National Guard. (Ars Technica)

At the National Geographic, Christina Nunez looks at how affordable underwater drones are aiding marine conservationists.

Meanwhile, students at the University of Washington are building underwater drones to study the ocean surrounding Antarctica. (UW)

At Air and Space Magazine, Tim Wright writes that the counter-drone industry could eventually be worth over a billion dollars.

At the U.S. Naval Institute, Lt. Alex Laun argues that the Navy needs a point person to coordinate the development of autonomous unmanned systems.

At Defense One, Caroline Houck looks at the technological advances that could enable “terror drones” to reach U.S. shores.

A drone video by architect Mariana Bisti offers an aerial perspective of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers. (dezeen)

Know Your Drone

Ukraine’s Iskra Scientific and Production Complex unveiled the Spectator-M, a small military reconnaissance drone. (Kyiv Post)

Russian design bureau Sovremennye Aviatsionnye Teknologii has unveiled a concept for a reconnaissance and strike drone based on the SR-10 jet trainer. (Jane’s)

Amazon has been granted a patent for a system by which its proposed delivery drones scan a customer’s home upon delivering a product in order to develop product recommendations for future purchases. (CNET)

British firm FlyLogix broke a national record for the longest beyond-line-of-sight drone flight during an 80km operation to inspect structures in the Irish Sea. (The Telegraph)

Rohde & Schwarz, ESG, and Diehl unveiled the Guardion, a counter-drone system. (Jane’s)

Researchers at Moscow Technological Institute have developed a defibrillator drone with a range of up to 50km. (TechCrunch)

The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center is developing a robotic refueling system for helicopters. (Shephard Media)

India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation has developed an unmanned tank for reconnaissance and mine detection. (Economic Times)

Using hundreds of plastic ducks, researchers at University of Adelaide in Australia have demonstrated that drones are more effective for counting birds than traditional techniques. (New Scientist)

Drones at Work

A team from Queensland University of Technology in Australia is planning to use drones to count koalas as part of a conservation initiative. (Phys.org)

Matagorda County and Wharton County in Texas are acquiring three drones for a range of operations. (The Bay City Tribune)

The Fire Department and Police Department of Orange, Connecticut have acquired a drone for emergency operations. (Milford-Orange Bulletin)

The Philippine Air Force is evaluating the Hermes 900 surveillance and reconnaissance drone for possible acquisition. (FlightGlobal)

A drone carrying cell phones and other contraband crashed into the yard at the Washington State Prison in Georgia. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

North Carolina has adopted a bill that expands drone rules to recreational model aircraft and prohibits drone use near prisons. (Triangle Business Journal)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Navy awarded Insitu a $19.6 million contract for five ScanEagle systems and support for the Government of Afghanistan. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Insitu a $3.01 million contract to integrate the Alticam 11 EO/IR Turret on the RQ-21A Blackjack. (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman a $211,397 contract for software for the MQ-8 Fire Scout. (FBO)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $10.2 million contract for the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node, a sensor on board the RQ-4 Global Hawk. (DoD)

The U.S. Army awarded R.C. Construction a $4.74 million contract for a Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Facility at Fort Benning, Georgia. (FBO)

Singular Aircraft finalized a contract to test the Flyox unmanned amphibious aircraft at the Pendleton Unmanned Aircraft System Test Range in Oregon. (My Columbia Basin)  

AeroVironment finalized a contract with the Australian Defence Force for the Wasp AE micro reconnaissance drone. (Press Release)

The Department of Homeland Security awarded Colorado-based VTO a $928,541 contract for drone forensics research and development. (Press Release)

The U.S. Air Force awarded the University of Arizona a $750,000 grant to build autonomous drones to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico. (Photonics)

The Dallas Safari Club Foundation awarded Delta Waterfowl, a duck hunting organization, a $10,000 grant to use drones to conduct a survey of duck nests. (Grand Forks Herald)

In a statement, Dassault CEO Éric Trappier said that the French-U.K. collaboration on a fighter drone will continue in spite of Brexit and a new Franco-German manned fighter project. (FlightGlobal)

A U.S. military study found that the cost of the Navy’s MQ-4C Triton program has risen by 17 percent. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter.

The K5 security robot fell into a fountain in Washington, D.C.

July 17, 2017 – July 23, 2017

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News

A U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan is reported to have mistakenly killed 15 Afghan soldiers. In a statement, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense reported that the strike hit a security outpost in Helmand province. (Voice of America)

The U.K. Department of Transport is developing regulations that would implement a drone registration program, safety courses for drone owners, and more extensive geo-fencing to keep drones out of restricted areas. According to the BBC, it is not yet clear when the new rules will go into effect.

China announced plans to advance the development of artificial intelligence. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China released a plan to grow AI-related industries into a $59.07 billion sector by 2025. (Reuters)

Canada’s transportation safety agency issued an update to its drone regulations. The update relaxes key provisions for recreational and commercial drone users. (CTV News)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

In testimony before the U.S. Senate, Air Force General Paul Selva argued that autonomous weapons should never be allowed to decide whether or not to take a human life. (Breaking Defense)

In a discussion at the National Governors Association annual meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk argued that artificial intelligence is a “fundamental existential risk for human civilization.” (Real Clear Politics)

At Wired, Tom Simonite argues that Musk’s comments are a distraction from the real problems of artificial intelligence.

A report by the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs considers how artificial intelligence could revolutionize warfare. (Wired)

At the Wall Street Journal, Jeremy Page and Paul Sonne look at how China is stepping up exports of drones to U.S. allies.

At Scout Warrior, David Hambling looks at how separatists in eastern Ukraine are arming small drones with grenades and other ordnance.

A NASA study found that noise from drones is more irritating to people than noise from cars. (New Scientist)

At Popular Mechanics, Eric Tegler looks at how the U.S. Air Force is testing equipment intended for the Reaper drone on a World War II-era Douglas DC-3.

At War on the Rocks, Gregory C. Allen considers how animals in nature inspire the design of military robots.

Also at War on the Rocks, Scott Cuomo argues that the Marine Corps needs a persistent aerial surveillance and strike drone like the MQ-9 Reaper.

At the Intercept, Robert Trafford and Nick Turse write that Cameroonian forces used a drone base to torture suspected members of Boko Haram.

CNN looks at how Agadez, a city in northern Niger where the U.S. is building a drone base, is an unstable “tinderbox.”

At the Motley Fool, Rich Smith offers suggestions on drone manufacturers to invest in.

Know Your Drone

Researchers at MIT are developing small power-efficient computer chips that could be used to build highly autonomous micro-drones. (The Drive)

An Australian student has developed a drone that is capable of flying for longer and at much higher speeds than other consumer systems. (ABC News)

Airbus Defense and Space conducted a test flight of a subscale model of the Sagitta stealth drone that it is developing with a group of German research institutes. (Aviation Week)

A team at the Singapore University of Technology & Design has developed a vertical take-off drone that transitions to horizontal flight by turning its rotors into wings. (The Verge)

A team at Stanford University is developing a wormlike robot that can move by expanding in size. (Science Robotics)

The Chinese military is developing what appears to be an 8×8 unmanned supply truck. (IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly)

Russian defense firm Kronstadt unveiled the concept for its Orion-E, a military drone that will be about the size of the MQ-1 Predator. (FlightGlobal)

Meanwhile, Russian Helicopters unveiled the VRT3000, a co-axial rotor reconnaissance helicopter drone. (Shephard Media)

Estonian firm Threod Systems is developing a new variant of its Stream tactical military drone. (IHS Jane’s International Defence Review)

Researchers at MIT have developed a small robot that can swim through water pipes searching for leaks. (Dezeen)

YouTube channel Make it Extreme published a video showing how one can build a DIY counter-drone net gun. (Popular Mechanics)

Estonian Startup Marduk Technologies plans to begin testing its Shark counter-drone system with the Estonian military in August or September. (IHS Jane’s International Defence Review)

The U.S. Navy issued a draft Request for Proposals detailing some of the characteristics of its planned MQ-25A Stingray refueling drone. (USNI News)

Israeli firm GPSdome has developed a jam-resistant GPS system for drones. (C4ISRNET)

Ukraine-based defense firm Infocom revealed new details about its Laska armed unmanned ground vehicle. (IHS Jane’s International Defence Review)

Drones at Work

Singapore has offered the Philippines drones and other military equipment for operations against Islamist militant groups. (Reuters)

Police departments in Dorset, Cornwall, and Devon in the U.K. have been using drones to track reckless motorcyclists. (The Drive)

The town of Deadwood in South Dakota has approved an ordinance restricting the use of drones in the city. (Black Hills Pioneer)

Investigators have concluded that a mid-air collision in Australia that was thought to have been caused by a drone was actually caused by a bat. (ABC News)

In a test, the U.S. Navy used its Laser Weapon System to shoot down a drone. (CNN)

A remotely operated robot exploring the interior of Fukushima’s reactor 3 appears to have discovered objects that could be fuel debris. (Japan Times)

The U.S. Air Force has established a program to teach coalition forces how to react to adversary drones on the battlefield. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

A drone flying near the scene of a car crash in Avonport, Canada delayed the departure of a helicopter that was airlifting a patient to hospital. (CBC)

The police department of Harvey County, Kansas found a missing 91-year-old man by using a drone. (KWCH)

Canada’s OEX Recovery group will use a Kraken unmanned undersea vehicle to search for the remains of several subscale prototype jets that crashed into Lake Ontario in the 1950s. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

The U.S. Navy Special Warfare Command is testing a vehicle-mounted SkySafe counter-drone system. (GCN)

LG Electronics has begun a live trial of a series of cleaning and guide robots at Incheon International Airport in South Korea. (ZDNet)

Meanwhile, a Knightscope security robot fell into a fountain while patrolling an office building in Washington, D.C. (CNN)

A drone crashed while racing a Formula E electric race car during an event in Brooklyn. (The Drive)

Industry Intel

Counter-drone company SkySafe raised $11.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. (TechCrunch)

The U.S. Navy awarded Hydroid a $27.3 million contract modification for the Mk 18 Kingfish family of unmanned undersea vehicles. (DoD)

The U.S. Coast Guard awarded General Dynamics Mission Systems a $29,610 contract for an unmanned underwater vehicle. (FBO)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Engility Corporation a contract for “autonomous collaborative vehicle research and development.” (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Insitu a $39,810 contract for software for the RQ-21A reconnaissance drone. (FBO)

The U.S. Army awarded Leonardo DRS and Moog a $16 million contract to develop a vehicle-mounted counter-drone system. (UPI)

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded General Atomics Aeronautical Systems a $3.9 million contract for UAS operational support and maintenance. (USASpending)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded BAE Systems a $4.6 million contract under the Mobile Offboard Clandestine Communications Approach program. (USNI News)

Georgia’s Innovation Fund Tiny Grant program awarded the Long Cane Middle School an $8,000 grant to develop a curriculum on drones. (The Journal)

U.S. drone firm Measure will offer new inspection services to the solar energy industry. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Propeller Aero will begin distributing Trimble’s Connected Site, a platform for analysis data from drones. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Solent Local Enterprise Partnership awarded BAE Systems a $593,871 grant to design a testing site for autonomous systems in the U.K. (Inside Unmanned Systems)

The U.K.’s Ministry of Defense awarded Inzpire Limited a contract to help train pilots of the new General Atomics Protector drone. (Inzpire)

Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industries announced that it will begin marketing the Hamaseh surveillance and strike drone to international customers. (FlightGlobal)

Israel Aerospace Industries will offer India an agreement to produce the Heron TP domestically. (FlightGlobal)

Israeli drone company Aeronautics will acquire an unnamed U.S. firm for $6 million. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter.

Emily – short for Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard – is a remote-controlled rescue boat used by lifeguards to save people’s life at sea (Photo: Hydrolanix – EMILY robot)

This article was first published on the IEC e-tech website.

Rapid advances in technology are revolutionizing the roles of aerial, terrestrial and maritime robotic systems in disaster relief, search and rescue (SAR) and salvage operations. Robots and drones can be deployed quickly in areas deemed too unsafe for humans and are used to guide rescuers, collect data, deliver essential supplies or provide communication services.

Well-established use

The first reported use of SAR robots was to explore the wreckage beneath the collapsed twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Drones and robots have been used to survey damage after disasters such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan in 2011 and the earthquakes in Haiti (2010) and Nepal (2015). Up to now, more than 50 deployments of disaster robots have been documented throughout the world, according to the Texas-based Center for Robot‑Assisted Search & Rescue (CRASAR).

Robin Murphy, head of CRASAR and author of the book Disaster Robotics, says:

The impact of earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding […] is increasing, so the need for robots for all phases of a disaster, from prevention to response and recovery, will increase as well.

Eyes in the sky

Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), can be used to detect and enter damaged buildings, assisting rescue robots and responders on the ground by speeding up the search for survivors through prioritizing which areas to search first. The more quickly SAR teams respond, the higher the survival rate is likely to be. Rescue drones create real-time maps by taking aerial surveys and send back photos, videos and sensor data to support damage assessments.

Drones used for SAR and disaster relief are most commonly powered by rechargeable batteries and are operated autonomously through onboard computers or by remote control. Their equipment typically comprises radar and laser scanners, multiple sensors and video and optical cameras as well as infrared cameras that are used to identify heat signatures of human bodies and other objects. This helps rescuers to locate survivors at night and in large, open environments and to identify hot spots from fires. Listening devices can pick up hard-to-hear audio, while Wi-Fi antennas and other attachments detect signals given off by mobile phones and plot a map that outlines the locations of victims.

New technologies in use or development for rescue drones and robots include ways of increasing survivor detection. Sensors scan areas for heartbeats and breathing, multisensor probes respond to odours or sounds and chemical sensors signal the presence of gases.

Standards put safety first

Much of the technology used in drones comes from commodity electronics developed for consumer essentials like mobile phones. Drones also require global positioning satellite (GPS) units, wireless transmitters, signal processors and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The flight controller also collects data from barometric pressure and airspeed sensors.

IEC International Standards produced by a range of IEC Technical Committees (TCs) and Subcommittees (SCs) cover the components of drones such as batteries, MEMS and other sensors, with an emphasis on safety and interoperability.

IEC TC 47: Semiconductor devices, and its SC 47F: Micro electromechanical systems, are responsible for compiling a wide range of International Standards for the semiconductor devices used in sensors and the MEMS essential to the safe operation of drone flights. These include accelerometers, altimeters, magnetometers (compasses), gyroscopes and pressure sensors. IEC TC 56: Dependability, covers the reliability of electronic components and equipment.

IEC TC 2: Rotating machinery, prepares International Standards covering specifications for rotating electrical machines, while IEC TC 91: Electronics assembly technology, is responsible for standards on electronic assembly technologies including components.

IEC SC 21A: Secondary cells and batteries containing alkaline or other non-acid electrolytes, compiles International Standards for batteries used in mobile applications, as well as for large-capacity lithium cells and batteries.

Ideal for isolated and remote hard-to-access areas

Using drones is useful not only when natural disasters make access by air, land, sea or road difficult, but also in isolated regions that lack accessible infrastructure. Recently, drones have started delivering medical supplies in areas where finding emergency healthcare is extremely difficult. In 2014, Médecins Sans Frontières piloted the use of drones to deliver vaccines and medicine in Papua New Guinea. In 2016, the US robotics company Ziplinelaunched a drone delivery service, in partnership with the government of Rwanda, to supply blood and medical supplies throughout the mountainous East African country. Zipline says its battery-powered drones can fly 120 km on a single charge to deliver medicine speedily, without the need for refrigeration or insulation.

Rwanda launches world’s first drone service to deliver blood to patients in remote areas of the country (Photo: Zipline)

A project by a company in the Netherlands to help refugees who get into difficulty in the Mediterranean Sea offers another example of drones being used for humanitarian purposes. Its search and rescue (SAR) drone is intended to fly over long distances, detect boats and drop life jackets, life buoys, food and medicine if necessary.

Currently only about a quarter of the world’s countries regulate the use of drones. Their deployment in disaster relief operations poses challenges involving regulatory issues, particularly when decisions are made on an ad hoc basis by local and national authorities. Humanitarian relief agencies also warn of the risks of relief drones being mistaken for military aircraft.

Two arms good, four arms better

Japan and the US lead the world in the development of rescue and disaster relief robots. Teams from both countries collaborated in recovery efforts after an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March 2011, causing a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. While a Japanese team operated an eight-meter long snake-like robot fitted with a camera, the US contribution included two remote-controlled robots. The first was a lightweight 22 kg model previously used for bomb disposal and other military tasks before being reconfigured for disaster relief operations. The larger US model, capable of lifting up to 90 kg, was adapted from a device originally used for firefighting and clearing rubble.

Endeavor Robotics 510 Packbots are deployed in emergency situations when direct human intervention is dangerous or impossible, such as after industrial or nuclear accidents. These robots were used at the Fukushima nuclear power plant (Photo: Endeavor Robotics)

In 2017, Japanese researchers unveiled a prototype drone-robot combination for use in disaster relief work. It consisted of a vision-guided robot equipped with sensitive measuring systems, including force sensors, and a drone tethered to the robot. Four fish‑eye cameras mounted on the drone capture video of overhead views, allowing the robot’s operator to assess damage in the surrounding area.

Another Japanese rescue robot unveiled in 2017 is a multi-limbed robot that is 1,7 m tall, with four arms capable of independent operation and four caterpillar treads for mobility. Called The Octopus, it is capable of lifting 200 kg with each arm, crossing uneven terrain and lifting itself over obstacles with two arms while the other two clear debris.

Octopus, developed by Japan’s Waseda University a robot designed to clear rubble in disaster areas including nuclear facilities (Photo: Waseda University)

In the US, researchers are exploring ways in which a small and light collapsible, origami‑inspired robot, first produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), could be adapted for use as a rescue robot. The device, known as PUFFER (Pop‑Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot) is designed to pack nearly flat for transport, and then re‑expand on site to explore tight nooks and crannies which are inaccessible to larger robots.

Over and underwater too

Given that 80% of the world’s population lives near water, maritime robotic vehicles can also play an important role in disaster relief by inspecting critical underwater infrastructure, mapping damage and identifying sources of pollution to harbours and fishing areas. Maritime robots helped to reopen ports and shipping channels in both Japan and Haiti after major earthquakes in 2011 and 2010 respectively.

In the Mediterranean, a battery‑powered robotic device first developed for use by lifeguards to rescue swimmers has been adapted to help rescue refugees crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey. This maritime robot has a maximum cruising speed of 35 km/h and can function as a flotation device for 4 people.

Easy to find components and technology
Rescue robots use components and technology found in most other robots used for commercial purposes. Actuators and other electric motors, accelerometers, gyroscopes and dozens of sensors and cameras providing 360⁰ views enable these robots to maintain balance while moving over uneven ground covered with rubble or debris, and to get a sense of the environment around them.

A robot operating in a hazardous environment needs independent power and sensors for specific environments. It may be cut off from its human operator when communication signals are patchy. When remote operation guided by sensor data becomes impossible, a rescue robot needs the ability to make decisions on its own, using machine learning or other artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

Several IEC TCs and SCs cooperate on the development of International Standards for the broad range of electrotechnical systems, equipment and applications used in rescue robots. In addition to IEC TC 47: Semiconductor devices and IEC SC 47F: Microelectromechanical systems, mentioned above, other IEC TCs involved in standardization work for specific areas affecting rescue and disaster relief robots include IEC TC 44: Safety of machinery – Electrotechnical aspects; IEC TC 2: Rotating machinery; IEC TC 17: Switchgear and controlgear; and IEC TC 22: Power electronic systems and equipment.

Where humans fear to tread
The number of disasters recorded globally has doubled since the 1980s, with damage and losses estimated at an average of USD 100 billion a year since the start of the new millennium, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a UK think tank. This trend is likely to lead to increased demand for unmanned robotic devices that can assist disaster relief operations on land, in the air and at sea.

Robots of all kinds play a growing role in supporting SAR teams. Increasing autonomy will create more capable ground robots, while a combination of rapid technological advances and regulation should see the market for disaster relief drones soar over the next five years.

MarketsandMarkets, a research company, estimated in October 2016 that the total global market for drones, comprising commercial and military sales, would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 20% between 2016 and 2022 to exceed USD 21 billion. Drones designed for humanitarian and disaster relief operations will account for 10% of the future drone market, according to the US‑based Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).

The South Korean Navy conducted shipboard flight tests for the TR-60 tilt-rotor UAV. Source: KARI

July 10, 2017 – July 16, 2017

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News

A U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan killed Abu Sayed, the leader of the local ISIS cell. In a statement, a Pentagon spokesperson said that the strike targeted the ISIS headquarters in Kunar Province. Abu Sayed’s predecessor, Abdul Hasib, was killed in a special forces raid in April. (New York Times)

A Turkish drone strike in Anatolia reportedly killed five suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. It was the first strike carried out with the Anka-S, a new Turkish surveillance and strike drone. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

Portugal will implement a new law regulating drone operations after a recent spike in reports of close encounters between drones and manned aircraft. Drone users will be required to register and purchase insurance. Speaking with members of a parliamentary committee, Infrastructure Minister Pedro Marques said that he hopes the law will be in place by the end of the month. (Associated Press)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At The Digital Circuit, Scott Simmie looks at how hackers are selling kits to disable the geofencing in drones made by DJI.

At the Hill, Paul Scharre argues that the U.S. should start treating drone exports the same way it treats exports of manned aircraft.

At Popular Mechanics, David Hambling looks at the technology underpinning a U.S. drone designed for research missions in the Arctic.

At War on the Rocks, Ben Brewster argues that the U.S. Marine Corps needs a long-endurance surveillance and strike drone like the Reaper or Gray Eagle.

In a speech in Washington, Gen. Mike Holmes argued that the U.S. Air Force needs greater authority to protect its facilities and aircraft against drones. (FlightGlobal)

London’s Gatwick Airport released a video showing how a drone can interrupt air traffic around an airport. (Motherboard)

At Truthout, Alex Edney-Browne looks at how on-the-ground research can shed more light on the effects of U.S. drone strikes.

At Vertical Magazine, Oliver Johnson looks at how a Canadian company is using drones to help fight wildfires.

At CBC, Dean Beeby writes that Transport Canada’s Arctic drone program was delayed because of international arms control regulations.

At Popular Science, Kelsey D. Atherton looks at how Amazon’s drone hub concepts pose big challenges for urban planners.

A drone video captured the extent of the destruction of Mosul, Iraq. (Associated Press)

Know Your Drone

A team of universities, research institutes, and broadcasters is looking to develop swarms of three to five video drones that can be used to film large sporting events. (Horizon)

Serbia’s Military Technical Institute has unveiled a prototype unmanned ground vehicle that is armed with a machine gun and a grenade launcher. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The Korea Aerospace Research Institute conducted flight trials of its TR-60 tiltrotor drone from a moving ship. (IHS Jane’s 360)

NASA has developed onboard software for drones called Safeguard that forces them to land if they come too close to a no-fly zone. (Wired)

Walmart has announced that it will conduct tests for its delivery drone program at an airport in Upstate New York. (New York Upstate)

Drone maker AirDog unveiled the ADII, a multirotor consumer drone optimized to record sports events and other outdoor activities. (The Drive)

In a test, a team at Johns Hopkins University successfully transported a medical sample under temperature control over 160 miles by drone. (SUAS News)

A consortium of three European countries is looking to develop an unmanned ship for use in the oil and gas sector. (Construction.Ru)

Israeli company Flytrex is seeking to use sophisticated air traffic management software to enable drone deliveries. (The Drive)

A Florida-based company has developed a simulated IED-equipped drone for training soldiers. (C4ISRNET)

CASC conducted a flight test of the new CH-5 Rainbow drone at an airport in northeast China. (East Pendulum)

Drones at Work

Drone maker Flyability announced that its collision-resistant Elios drone has been used to inspect the interior of a nuclear reactor building. (Press Release)

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating a possible collision between a drone and a light aircraft near Adelaide. Nobody was injured in the incident. (ABC) For more on Close Encounters, click here.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force is looking to obtain authority to shoot down small drones over its facilities after a recent close encounter between a F-22 Raptor jet and a drone. (Aviation Week)

Researchers in Boulder, Colorado used drones to survey damage caused to local trees by invasive green jewel beetles. (Daily Camera)

South Korea is looking to deploy a new system to detect North Korean surveillance drones that fly into its territory. (UPI)

A Drone Racing League RacerX quadcopter drone set a new record for the fastest civilian drone, hitting a top speed of 179.3 mph. (CNET)

Researchers at Northwestern University are developing small ground robots equipped with whiskers that allow them to precisely detect their surroundings. (Wired)

Police in Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset in England are launching the country’s first police unit dedicated to using drones. (AP)

Singapore’s upcoming National Day Parade will feature a light show of 300 drones. (The Straits Times)

Police in DeSoto County, Mississippi used a drone to help investigators search for debris from a recent military plane crash in the area. (Fox13)

North Dakota authorities dismissed criminal charges against a man who was accused of using a drone to stalk a group of private security workers at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests last year. (Bismarck Tribune)

The British Army will no longer use the Black Hornet, a micro drone made by Norway’s Prox Dynamics. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Office of Naval Research awarded Embry-Riddle University a $900,000 grant to develop advanced communication systems for unmanned surface vehicles. (Press Release)

The National Science Foundation awarded Bakman Technologies a grant to develop a sensor for a drone to monitor emissions that contribute to global warming. (Drone Life)

Colorado’s El Paso County awarded Sanborn Map Company a multi-year contract to provide drones for a variety of missions, including disaster response and construction site monitoring. (Press Release)

The U.S. Coast Guard awarded Riptide Autonomous Solutions a $69,374 contract for an unmanned underwater vehicle. (FBO)

The French Navy awarded ECA Group a contract for unmanned undersea vehicles for mine detection and disposal. (Press Release)  

Germany’s Bundeswehr awarded EMT a $71 million contract for three LUNA NG systems. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

Thales is reportedly marketing the Watchkeeper surveillance drone to the Indonesian Air Force. (IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly)

The U.S. Department of Defense awarded Autonomous Solutions a contract to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to autonomous vehicles operating in challenging environments. (Press Release)

CybAero Ab, a Swedish company that makes rotary drones, signed a debt-refinancing deal with Bracknor, a Dubai-based investment firm. (DefenseNews)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter.

Last August, Singapore became the first country to permit autonomous taxis on its roads. Boston-based startup nuTonomy moved its operations to the Far East, which enabled the company to launch public trials weeks before Uber’s test in Pittsburgh. The secret to the company’s speed to market was to skip America’s 19,492 municipal government licensing departments to pilot its technology years before any of the other competing technologies, with the exception of Google’s Waymo. In addition to less regulatory hoops, the Singapore Land Transport Authority has partnered with nuTonomy on its rollout.

Pang Kin Keong, Singapore’s Permanent Secretary for Transport and the Chairman of its Committee on autonomous driving, said “We face constraints in land and manpower. We want to take advantage of self-driving technology to overcome such constraints, and in particular to introduce new mobility concepts which could bring about transformational improvements to public transport in Singapore.”

The company is on track to offer its driverless taxis throughout the country by 2018. Doug Parker’s, nuTonomy’s COO, estimates that autonomous taxis could ultimately reduce the number of cars on Singapore’s roads from 900,000 to 300,000. Park explains, “When you are able to take that many cars off the road, it creates a lot of possibilities. You can create smaller roads, you can create much smaller car parks. I think it will change how people interact with the city going forward.” Park’s partnership with the city-state is made possible because Singapore is not straddled with the costs of aging infrastructure like many US and European cities.

Since first announcing its test in 2016, nuTonomy is on pace to expand globally with its recent partnership with ride-sharing company Lyft in a pilot in Boston. Karl Iagnemma, nuTonomy’s CEO, said: “By combining forces with Lyft in the U.S., we’ll be positioned to build the best passenger experience for self-driving cars. Both companies care immensely about solving urban transportation issues and the future of our cities, and we look forward to working with Lyft as we continue to improve our autonomous vehicle software system.”

Besides autonomous vehicles, drones have been widely embraced by Singapore’s infamously strict police department. Singaporean startup H3 Dynamics became the first company last year to launch a drone in the box solution that offers storage and charging stations in the field. H3’s “DRONEBOX” is a unique solar-based charging station that enables longer autonomous missions in areas that are typically hostile for humans. Since showcasing its technology above the streets of Singapore, H3 faces increased competition from formidable upstarts, including: Airobotics, EasyAriel, and HiveUAV.

According to its original press release, “DRONEBOX is an all-inclusive, self-powered system that can be deployed anywhere, including in remote areas where industrial assets, borders, or sensitive installations require constant monitoring. Designed as an evolution over today’s many unattended sensors and CCTV cameras installed in cities, borders, or large industrial estates, DRONEBOX innovates by giving sensors freedom of movement using drones as their vehicles. End-users can now deploy flying sensor systems at different locations, and measure just about anything, anywhere, anytime. They offer 24/7 reactivity, providing critical information to operators – even to those located thousands of miles away.”

In June, Dynamic H3 announced the opening of new drone operation centers to include Europe, America and the Middle East. Additionaly, H3 is now marketing its next generation of battery technology for extended high-value asset missions. H3’s HES Energy Systems is the product a decade-long research initiative between the company and the Singaporean government. Unlike typical drone lithium batteries that have a flight-time of 20-40 minutes, HES Energy’s developed its ground-breaking 6 hour battery (above) with a first of its kind “solid-hydrogen on demand powered system.” The combination of longer flights, self-charging stations and autonomous missions is a powerful value proposition for this Singaporean offering in differentiating itself in an already crowded unmanned flight market.

This past week, Dubai announced its plans to roll out a fleet of mini autonomous police cars for surveillance and crime prevention. This effort is part of the Middle Eastern city’s program to automate 25% of its police force over the next decade. The Gulf State’s ambitious plans were a perfect fit for Singaporean OTSAW Digital, a division of ActiV-a global tech powerhouse. Similar to nuTonomy and H3, OTSAW’s O-R3 grew out of the innovation friendly environment of the Asian republic.

OR-3 is smaller than a golf cart, and not meant actually to capture nefarious actors, but to identify suspicious activity while it is happening. Using facial recognition technology and a built-in ariel drone, the robot will begin patrolling the Dubai beat by the end of the year. The autonomous car/drone combo is almost a hybrid of nuTonomy and H3, with an array of sensors and machine intelligence technologies to survey the area via thermal imaging, license plate readers and cloud-based computing.

According to Abdullah Khalifa Al Marri, the head of the Dubai police department, the OR-3 isn’t meant to replace officers but rather to augment their skills with more efficient resources. “We seek to augment operations with the help of technology such as robots. Essentially, we aim for streets to be safe and peaceful without heavy police patrol,” said Al Marri. Last month, Dubai even deployed a humanoid-looking robot to monitor tourist attractions, dubbed Robocop, that speaks English and Arabic. According to Dubai, it plans to deploy larger humanoids that stand over 10 feet tall and go over 50 mph, while the human controller operates the device inside the robots.

Brigadier-General Khalid Nasser Al Razzouqi, Director-General of Smart Services at Dubai Police’s department, boasted, “The launch of the world’s first operational Robocop is a significant milestone for the Emirate and a step towards realizing Dubai’s vision to be a global leader in smart cities technology adoption.” In 2015, The World Economic Forum ranked the United Arab Emirates as the second most tech savvy government in the world, just behind Singapore.

As I write this article I find myself at another conference, “The State of New York: Smart Cities.” Hoping for insights about how my city will compete with the likes of these tech savvy counterparts, I was met by a group of bureaucrats touting App Competitions and Free WiFi. One speaker even suggested that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is run by the best executive team, even though New York’s Governor has politely called the organization dysfunctional due to multiple train derailments, signal problems, and overcrowded stations (see: The Summer of Hell). Science is not just about the possible, but the willing. Singapore’s ability to reinvent the very nature of how a city operates and partners with the private sector is proof positive that even a country founded 50 years ago can climb to the “top of the heap.”

A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news, our robotics digest is released on the first Monday of every month. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Robots, drones and AI in action

Let’s kick off our June review by looking at some great new robotics research and development in action: Inspired by arthropod insects and spiders, Harvard Professor George Whitesides and Alex Nemiroski—a former postdoctoral fellow in Whitesides’ Harvard lab—have created a type of semi-soft robot capable of standing and walking. The team also created a robotic water strider capable of pushing itself along the liquid surface. The robots are described in a recently published paper in the journal Soft Robotics.

And in news from the garden shed, Franklin Robotics has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Tertill, their solar-powered, garden-weeding robot. Tertill lives in your garden, collecting sunlight to power its weed patrol, and cutting down short plants with a string trimmer/weed whacker with almost no intervention required. Available for about $300USD, the fully autonomous Tertill is the first weeding robot available to home gardeners! Check out the video below.

You may have heard that humankind lost another important battle with artificial intelligence last month when AlphaGo beat the world’s leading Go player Ke Jie by three games to zero. AlphaGo is an AI program developed by DeepMind, part of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Last year it beat another leading player, Lee Se-dol, by four games to one, but since then AlphaGo has substantially improved. Ke Jie described AlphaGo’s skill as “like a God of Go”. But AlphaGo will now retire from playing Go, leaving behind a legacy of games played against itself. These games have been described by one Go expert as like “games from far in the future”, which humans will study for years to improve their own play.

Elsewhere, Chinese education authorities have gone high-tech to catch cheaters as millions of high-school students take their “gaokao”, the annual university entrance exam seen as key to landing a lucrative white-collar job. So high are the stakes and so competitive is the exam that some students resort to cheating. But not if these facial recognition drones can help it.

Meanwhile, back in the pub, students from the University of Leeds have created a robot which they claim is capable of pulling the perfect pint. The team, from the School of Mechanical Engineering, worked with local engineering company Quality Bearings, and Saltaire Brewery to come up with the concept. The robot was put through its paceswith a taste test, a consistency test and a wastage test. Check out the clip below.

At ICRA 2017, researchers from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) introduced a small robotic explorer that uses a single solid-fuel rocket to launch itself into the air. What’s new is that their robot includes some braking rockets that help it make pinpoint landings, as well as a clever gyroscopic system to make sure that it flies straight as well as providing a way for the robot to get around after landing.

In other flying news, a team of MIT engineers has come up with a much less expensive UAV design that can hover for longer durations to provide wide-ranging communications support. The researchers designed, built, and tested a UAV resembling a thin glider with a 24-foot wingspan. The vehicle can carry 4.5 to 9 kg of communications equipment while flying at an altitude of 15,000 feet. Weighing in at just under 68 kg, the vehicle is powered by a 5-horsepower gasoline engine and can keep itself aloft for more than five days — longer than any gasoline-powered autonomous aircraft has remained in flight, the researchers say. Check out the Jungle Hawk Owl’s maiden flight below.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are aiming to develop flying robots that can both drive through a city-like setting with parking spots, no fly zones and landing pads. In a new paper, the team presented a system of eight quadcopter drones that can do all of that and more.

And last but not least: Authors of the ICRA 2017 Best Automation Paper “UAV-Based Crop and Weed Classification for Smart Farming” wrote about their findings for Robohub. Check it out.

Policy and financing

Europe needs a “human in command approach,” says the European Economic and Social Comitte (EESC). The EU must pursue a policy that ensures the development, deployment and use of artificial intelligence in Europe in favor, and not conducive to the detriment, of society and social welfare, the Committee said in an initiative opinion on the social impact of AI which 11 fields are identified for action.

Across the pond, some of the nation’s leading wireless giants and drone makers offered “effusive praise” of President Donald Trump in June as they lobbied his administration to eliminate the federal regulations that stand in the way of their businesses. As part of the White House’s five-day focus on technology, Trump gathered executives from those industries—including AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, PrecisionHawk CEO Michael Chasen and a number of venture capitalists—for a morning of brainstorming sessions devoted to spurring new investments in emerging fields.

And in a long-awaited business transaction, The New York Times Dealbook announced that SoftBank was buying Boston Dynamics from Alphabet (Google). Also included in the deal is the Japanese startup Schaft. Acquisition details were not disclosed. Both Boston Dynamics and Schaft were acquired by Google when Andy Rubin was developing Google’s robot group through a series of acquisitions. Both companies have continued to develop innovative mobile robots. And both have been on Google’s “for sale” list.

The Drone Racing League (DRL) has announced the closing of a $20 million Series B round of financing, bringing the total amount raised to $32 million. The new round of financing was led by Sky, Liberty Media LMCA +% (owner of Formula 1) and Lux Capital, with involvement by a couple of new investors in Allianz and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Investment from Allianz was expected after it was announced that Allianz signed on to become title sponsor of DRL’s elite racing circuit in February.

Pilots are gearing up to compete in the DRL. Image: Drone Racing League.

Health and medicine

Researchers from MIT’s CSAIL have developed a new system that uses a 3-D camera, a belt with separately controllable vibrational motors distributed around it, and an electronically reconfigurable Braille interface to give visually impaired users more information about their environments.

New algorithms power a prototype system for helping visually impaired users avoid obstacles and identify objects. Courtesy of the researchers.

Elsewhere, a researcher at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) is developing a bio-inspired ‘smart’ knee joint for prosthetic lower limbs. Dr Appolinaire Etoundi, based at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, is leading the research and will analyse the functions, features and mechanisms of the human knee in order to translate this information into a new bio-inspired procedure for designing prosthetics.

And the medical innovations didn’t stop there in June. How about Robot snakes slithering into the delicate field of heart surgery? Or a robotic doctor that can be controlled hundreds of kilometres away by a human counterpart? Getting a check-up from a robot may sound like something from a sci-fi film, but scientists are closing in on this real-life scenario and have already tested a prototype.

An aging population means the age-dependency ratio—the proportion of the elderly compared with the number of workers—will almost double from 28.8 % in 2015 to 51 % in 2080, straining healthcare systems and national budgets. The creators of one humanoid robot (below) under development for the elderly say it can understand people’s actions and learn new behaviors in response, even though it is devoid of arms. Robots can be programmed to understand an elderly person’s preferences and habits to detect changes in behavior: for example if a yoga devotee misses a class, it will ask why, while if an elderly person falls it will automatically alert caregivers or emergency services.

Humanoid robots under development can be programmed to detect changes in an elderly person’s preferences and habits. Image credit: GrowMeUp

Self-driving news

June was a huge month of wheeling and dealing in the self-driving cars industry. NuTonomy, a small Boston startup that makes software for self-driving cars, has launched a research-and-development partnership with San Francisco’s Lyft Inc., the second-largest ride-hailing company in the United States. It’s the latest alliance between Lyft and a maker of autonomous vehicle technology, and could boost nuTonomy’s efforts to become a major force in self-driving vehicles. Lyft chief executive Logan Green said the partnership “could lead to thousands of Lyft cars on the nuTonomy platform.”

Source: Uber

Meanwhile, competitors Uber, the global ride-sharing transportation company, named two replacements to recover from the recent firing of Anthony Levandowski who headed their Advanced Technologies Group, their OTTO trucking unit, and their self-driving team. Levandowski was fired May 30th. Eric Meyhofer and Anthony Levandowski will pick up the slack.

In other high-level firing news, Tesla Inc. has parted ways with another senior leader on its self-driving technology team, adding more turmoil to a program that is under pressure to meet the grand ambitions of Chief Executive Elon Musk. The Silicon Valley electric-car maker said Chris Lattner—head of development of Tesla’s Autopilot program—left his post as after he and Musk failed to see eye to eye on some important issues during Lattner’s six months in post.

Meanwhile, Waymo is done driving around the cute, steering-wheel-free autonomous cars that were introduced by Google back in 2014. In a blog post, Waymo leaders write that time has come to “retire our fleet of Fireflies” —their name for the tiny cars—and focus instead of integrating self-driving technology into other vehicles, like the Chrysler Pacifica minivans Waymo put on the road earlier this year.

Source: Waymo

In the UK, Venturer driverless car project published results of their first trials. Venturer is the first Connected and Autonomous Vehicle project to start in the UK. The results of Venturer’s preliminary trials show that the handover process is a safety critical issue in the development of Autonomous Vehicles. The first Venturer  trials set out to investigate ‘takeover’ (time taken to reengage with vehicle controls) and ‘handover’ (time taken to regain a baseline/normal level of driving behavior and performance) when switching frequently between automated and manual driving modes within urban and extra-urban settings. This trial is believed to be the first to directly compare handover to human driver-control from autonomous mode in both simulator and autonomous road vehicle platforms.

Honda was the latest automaker to commit to an ambitious self-driving car goal in June. It wants cars with SAE Level 4 autonomy on the road by 2025, CEO Takahiro Hachigo announced at a media event in Japan. This news will likely stoke a fire underneath other Japanese self-driving car developers, so stay tuned for lots of new developments.

Auto supplier Robert Bosch GmbH will build a 1 billion-euro ($1.1 billion) semiconductor plant, the biggest single investment in its history, as the maker of brakes and engines prepares for a surge in demand for components used in self-driving vehicles.

Tutorials

Robohub showcased some great tutorials last month. Here’s one: The Robot Academy is a new learning resource from Professor Peter Corke and the Queensland University of Technology, the team behind the award-winning Introduction to Robotics and Robotic Vision courses. There are over 200 lessons available, all for free. The courses were designed for university undergraduate students but many lessons are suitable for anybody! So get stuck in.

Florian Enner offered this useful tutorial on programming: “Using MATLAB for hardware-in-the-loop prototyping #1 : Message passing systems”. Check it out here.

And Ricardo Téllez offered an article on “Teaching ROS quickly to students“—a novel method of teaching to class of students in a rapid time frame.

Enjoy!

Upcoming events for July– August 2017

CIROS: July 5, 2017 — July 8, 2017, Shanghai, China

ASCEND Conference and Expo: July 19, 2017 — July 21, 2017, Portland, OR

RoboCup: July 25, 2017 — July 31, 2017, Nagoya, Japan

Farm Progress Show: August 29, 2017 — August 31, 2017, Decatur, IL

World of Drones Congress (WoDC): August 31, 2017 — September 2, 2017, Brisbane, Australia

The U.S. Army is developing a drone that moves like a flying squirrel. Credit: David McNally/U.S. Army

News

A U.S. drone strike in Somalia targeted members of al-Shabab. It is the second drone strike in Somalia since President Trump relaxed rules for targeting members of the al-Qaeda-allied group. (New York Times)

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is offering refunds to drone hobbyists who paid the $5 fee to register with the agency. The move follows a federal court ruling in May that found that the FAA could not compel recreational drone users to register. The FAA has collected over $4 million in fees since it implemented the registration policy in December 2015. (Recode)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At the Washington Post, Greg Jaffe profiles U.S. Air Force analysts who examine video imagery from drones.

In a report published by the Mitchell Institute, Gen. David Deptula argues that the U.S. Department of Defense should create an office for unmanned aircraft to coordinate efforts across the different services. (Breaking Defense)

In Drone Warrior, Brett Velicovich and Christopher S. Stewart offer an insider’s account of running U.S. targeted killing operations. (Wired)

At Lawfare, Kenneth Anderson and Matthew Waxman present a primer on the legal and ethical debates over autonomous weapons.

At the Jamestown Foundation, Elsa Kania writes that the China is seeking to leverage recent advances in swarming drones to bolster its military.

This month’s Signal magazine includes several articles on drones and robots. (AFCEA)

At Breaking Defense, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. looks at how the lack of trust between humans and unmanned systems will inhibit the integration of robots in the future.

At the Morning Consult, Edward Graham writes that recent legislation in Congress would enable localities to have a greater say in drone regulations.

At TechCrunch, Helen Greiner discusses how robots and drones have taken on more and more roles.

At Poynter, Melody Kramer considers how recent aerial images of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on an empty beach demonstrate how drones are becoming effective newsgathering tools.

At Drone360, Lauren Sigfusson looks at how the FAA’s Part 107 waiver and authorization process has changed in recent weeks.

At Arkansas Matters, Chris Pulliam says that crop dusters are concerned about the potential threats posed to their aircraft by drones.

At DefenseNews, Burak Ege Bekdil writes that Turkey is increasingly relying on drones for border security, counterterrorism, and operations against Kurdish groups.  

At the National Interest, Samuel Bendett considers whether Russia will ever be able to catch up with the U.S. and Israel in terms of drone development.

In a letter to the editor of the Pocono Record, Pete Sauvigne argues that a local model aircraft club should not be stripped of its permission to fly in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

At The Drive, Marco Margaritoff looks at a few of National Geographic’s best drone photos of year to date. Know Your Drone

The U.S. Army is developing a drone that moves like a flying squirrel. (Popular Mechanics)

Meanwhile, the Army is developing a system that allows a single human operator to control multiple drones. (Press Release)

Defense firm Rafael has added a laser interceptor to its Drone Dome counter-drone system. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Italian firm Piaggio has resumed flight testing of its HammerHead military drone a year after the program was grounded due to a crash. (AIN Online)

Israeli defense firm Elbit has demonstrated its Seagull unmanned surface vehicle in an end-to-end mine countermeasures mission. (IHS Jane’s 360)

A group of researchers in Florida is developing an underwater drone that seeks out and collects lionfish, an invasive species in the area. (Pensacola News Journal)

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are developing a jumping one-legged robot that could eventually be used for search and rescue. (Wired)

The U.S. Coast Guard will begin evaluating different small drones with the goal of acquiring a system in 2018. (C4ISRNet)

Meanwhile, South Korea’s Coast Guard is looking to equip its offshore patrol vessels with aerial surveillance drones by 2020. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The Netherlands Aerospace Centre is testing a small jet-powered fixed-wing drone. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Hot dog company Oscar Mayer revealed the newest addition to its WienerFleet, the WienerDrone, a hot dog delivery drone. (Fortune)

Drones at Work

An inmate who broke out of a South Carolina prison reportedly escaped using tools delivered to him by a drone. (The New York Times)

The Russian Navy is reportedly displeased with the performance of its Inspector Mk2 unmanned surface vehicle developed by French firm ECA Group. (Mil.Today)

Officials in Kaziranga National Park in India are using drones to monitor wildlife displaced by recent floods in the area. (Hindustan Times)

The Redondo Beach Police Department in California used a drone to conduct aerial surveillance during the local Independence Day celebrations. (Easy Reader News)

Meanwhile, Police in Nashville, Tennessee arrested a man for flying a drone over a large crowd during a Fourth of July celebration. (Fox 17)

The French Air Force flew one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones in civilian domestic airspace for the first time. (Aviation Analysis Wing)

Ohio has passed a law that permits ground delivery robots to operate on sidewalks. It is the fifth U.S. state to pass such a law. (Recode)

Florida governor Rick Scott signed a bill that establishes statewide regulations for drone use. (Flying Magazine)

A volunteer rescue group in Italy is using drones to look for signs of possible impending rock slides before they happen. (Motherboard)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Army awarded Assist Consultants a $18.1 million contract to build a facility for the Navy’s MQ-4C Triton at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. (FBO)

The Department of Justice awarded AARDVARK a $51,247 contract for backpackable robots. (FBO)

Germany’s Bayer CropScience awarded SlantRange, a U.S. company that makes sensors for drones, a contract to collect data on crop breeding and research programs. (Agriculture.com)

Australia’s new Defense Cooperative Research Center will award $50 million in grants to develop autonomous capabilities for military unmanned systems. (Press Release)

The European Union selected Sensofusion, a Finnish company, to help develop a counter-drone security system. (Press Release)

Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris has contracted Aveillant to install a counter-drone system called Gamekeeper. (FlightGlobal)

Germany is pausing plans to acquire the Israel Aerospace Industries Heron military drone until after its upcoming election. (DefenseNews)

IAI has agreed to transfer drone technology to India’s Dynamatic Technologies and Elcom Systems. (IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly)

Meanwhile, Indonesia and Turkey agreed to cooperate on the development of military systems and technologies, including drones. (IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly)

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions stock prices lifted 11 percent in June, due in part to news of a sale of attritable unmanned aircraft. (Motley Fool)

The Israeli military awarded Duke Robotics, a Florida-based startup, a contract for the TIKAD, a quadrotor drone that can be armed with a machine gun or grenade launcher. (Defense One)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

Credit: Flickr/ Ville Hyvönen

by Joe Dodgshun
Drone innovators are transforming the way we watch events, from football matches and boat races to music festivals.

Anyone who has watched coverage of a festival or sports event in the last few years will probably have witnessed commercial drone use — in the form of breathtaking aerial footage.

But a collaboration of universities, research institutes and broadcasters is looking to take this to the next level by using a small swarm of intelligent drones.

The EU-funded MULTIDRONE project seeks to create teams of three to five semi-automated drones that can react to and capture unfolding action at large-scale sports events.

Project coordinator Professor Ioannis Pitas, of the University of Bristol, UK, says the collaboration aims to have prototypes ready for testing by its media partners Deutsche Welle and Rai – Radiotelevisione Italiana within 18 months.

‘Deutsche Welle has two potential uses lined up – filming the Rund um Wannsee boat race in Berlin, Germany, and also filming football matches with drones instead of normal cameras – while Rai is interested in covering cycling races,’ said Prof. Pitas.

‘We think we have the potential to offer a much better film experience at a reduced cost compared to helicopters or single drones, producing a new genre in drone cinematography.’

‘We have the potential to offer a much better film experience at a reduced cost compared to helicopters or single drones, producing a new genre in drone cinematography.’

Professor Ioannis Pitas, University of Bristol, UK

But before they can chase the leader of the Tour de France, MULTIDRONE faces the hefty challenge of creating AI that allows its drones to safely carry out a mission as a team.

Prof. Pitas says safety is the utmost priority, so the drones will include advanced crowd avoidance mechanisms and the ability to make emergency landings.

And it’s not just safety in the case of bad weather, a flat battery or a rogue football.

‘Security of communications is important as a drone could otherwise be hijacked, not just undermining privacy but also raising the possibility that it could be used as a weapon,’ said Prof. Pitas.

The early project phase will have a strong focus on ethics to prevent any issues around privacy.

‘People are sensitive about drones and about being filmed and we’re approaching this in three ways — trying to avoid shooting over private spaces, getting consent from the athletes being followed, and creating mechanisms that decide which persons to follow and blur other faces.’

If they can pull it off, he predicts a huge boost for the European entertainment industry and believes it could lead to much larger drone swarms capable of covering city-wide events.

Drones-on-demand
According to Gartner research, sales of commercial-use drones are set to jump from 110 000 units in 2016 to 174 000 this year. Although 2 million toy drones were snapped up last year for USD 1.7 billion, the commercial market dwarfed this at USD 2.8 billion.

Aside from pure footage, drones have also proven their worth in research, disaster response, construction and even in monitoring industrial assets.

One company trying to open up the market to those needing a sky-high helping hand is Integra Aerial Services, a young drones-as-a-service company.

An offshoot of Danish aeronautics firm Integra Holding Group, INAS, was launched in 2014 thanks to an EU-backed feasibility study.

INAS has more than 25 years of experience in aviation and used its knowledge of the sector’s legislation to shape a business model targeting heavier, more versatile drones weighing up to 25 kilogrammes. And they have already been granted a commercial drone operating license by the Danish Civil Aviation Authority.

These bigger drones have far more endurance than typical toy drones, which can weigh anywhere from 250 grams to several kilos. INAS CEO Gilles Fartek says their bigger size means they can carry multiple sensors, thus collecting all the needed data in one fell swoop, instead of across multiple flights.

For example, one of their drones flies LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) radar over Greenland to measure ice thickness as a measure of climate change, but could also carry a 100 megapixel, high-definition camera.

While INAS spends most of the Arctic summer running experiments from the remote host Station Nord in Greenland, Fartek says they’re free to use the drones for different projects in other seasons, mostly in areas of environmental research, mapping and agricultural monitoring.

‘You can’t match the quality of data for the price, but drone-use regulations in Europe are still quite complicated and make between-country operations almost impossible,’ said Fartek.

‘The paradox is that you have an increasing demand for such civil applications across Europe and even in institutional areas like civil protection and maritime safety where they cannot use military drones.’

A single European sky
These issues, and more, should soon be addressed by SESAR, the project which coordinates all EU research and development activities in air traffic management. SESAR plans to deploy a harmonised approach to European airspace management by 2030 in order to meet a predicted leap in air traffic.

Recently SESAR unveiled its blueprint outlining how it plans to make drone use in low-level airspace safe, secure and environmentally friendly. They hope this plan will be ready by 2019, paving the way for an EU drone services market by safely integrating highly automated or autonomous drones into low-level airspace of up to 150 metres.

Modelled after manned aviation traffic management, the plan will include registration of drones and operators, provide information for autonomous drone flights and introduce geo-fencing to limit areas where drones can fly.

The Issue
Emerging drone sectors range from delivery services, collecting industry data, infrastructure inspections, precision agriculture, transportation and logistics.

The market for drone services is expected to grow substantially in the coming years with an estimated worth of EUR 10 billion by 2035.

To support high-potential small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the European Commission has allocated EUR 3 billion over the period 2014-2020. A further EUR 17 billion was set aside under the Industrial Leadership pillar of the EU’s current research funding programme Horizon 2020.

More info
MULTIDRONE

INAS

Crops are key for a sustainable food production and we face several challenges in crop production. First, we need to feed a growing world population. Second, our society demands high-quality foods. Third, we have to reduce the amount agrochemicals that we apply to our fields as it directly affects our ecosystem. Precision farming techniques offer a great potential to address these challenges, but we have to acquire and provide the relevant information about the field status to the farmers such that specific actions can be taken.

This paper won the IEEE Robotics & Automation Best Automation Paper Award at ICRA 2017.

Modern approaches as agriculture system management and smart farming typically require detailed knowledge about the current field status. For successful on-field intervention, it is key to know the type and spatial distribution of the crops and weeds on the field at an early state. The earlier mechanical or chemical weeding actions are executed, the higher the chances for obtaining a high yield. A prerequisite to trigger weeding and intervention task is a detailed knowledge about the spread of weeds. Therefore, it is important to have an automatic perception pipeline that monitors and analyzes the crops automatically and provides report about the status on the field.

Fig. 1 illustrates the input and output of our approach. We use a comparably cheap, out-of-the-box UAV system to capture images of a field and compute a class label to each pixel, i.e., determine if that pixel belongs a crop or a weed. Through the use of GNSS and bundle adjustment procedures, we can obtain the spatial distribution of the detected crops and weeds in a global reference frame.

Use Case 1: Farmer Support: In order to reduce the investments on herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers by keeping or even increasing the yield, farmers must meet the following key questions: Where are weeds in the field? as well as where do the crops grow abnormally? Given the knowledge about the plant specific spatial distribution as illustrated in Fig. 2, farmers can decide, which and how much agro-chemicals are needed to address their specific needs. Furthermore, they can perform individual actions at specific locations in the field.

Figure 1: Low-cost DJI Phantom 4 UAV used for field monitoring (left) as well as an example image analyzed by our approach (right). Here, green refers to detected sugar beets, which we consider as crop, and purple refers to weeds.

Use Case 2: Autonomous Robots: In the future, autonomous robotic systems are likely to be used to manage arable farm land. Robots have the potential to survey the current field status on a continuous time scale and perform specific tasks such as weed control on a per-plant basis only in regions on a field where an action is actually needed. This work is part of the FLOURISH project (flourishproject.eu) were we are developing teams of autonomously and collaboratively operating UAVs and UGVs. Here, the UAVs offer excellent survey capabilities at low cost and can be used to analyze the field status. The analysis of crop and weed growth on the field is an essential building block to infer target locations for a targeted ground intervention. Thus, the UAV can send an UGV to those locations to execute interventions task.

Approach

We address the problem of analyzing UAV imagery to inspect the status of a field in terms of weed types and spatial crop and weed distribution. We focus on a detection on a per-plant basis to estimate the amount of crops as well as various weed species to provide this information to the farmers or as a part of an autonomous robotic perception system. In our work, we propose a vision-based classification system for identifying crops and weeds in both, RGB-only as well as RGB combined with near infra-red (NIR) imagery of agricultural fields captured by an UAV. Our perception pipeline is capable of detecting plants in such images only based on their appearance. Our approach is also able to exploit the geometry of the plant arrangement without requiring a known spatial distribution to be specified explicitly. Optionally, we can utilize prior information regarding the crop arrangement like crop rows. In addition to that it can deal with vegetation, which is located within the intra-row space.

Figure 2: Analyzed field status by our approach. Based on these informations the farmers can schedule their next individual actions and estimate the needed amount of agro-chemicals for their field.

Processing Pipeline

The three key steps of our systems are the following: First, we apply a preprocessing in order to normalize intensity values on a global scale and detect the vegetation in each image. Second, we extract features only for regions, which correspond to vegetation, exploiting a combination of an object-based and a keypoint based approach. We compute around 550 visual features containing intensity statistics, texture and shape information. In addition to that, we exploit geometric features, which encode spatial relationships between the vegetation as well as optional crop row features, which consider the distance from the vegetation to estimated crop rows. Third, we apply a multi-class Random Forest classification and obtain a probability distribution for the predicted class labels.

Figure 3: Example image captured by a DJI Phantom 4 at low altitude at different levels of progress within the classification pipeline. From left to right: normalized RGB image, computed Excess Green Index (ExG), vegetation mask that reflect the spatial distribution of the vegetation and multi-class classification output of our plant/weed classification system

Fig. 3 illustrates the key steps of our pipeline and Fig. 4 depicts an example of the detected crop rows. The papers [1] and [2] provide a detailed description of the pipeline as well as the features we are using for the classification.

Results and Conclusion

Figure 4: Detected set of crop rows (red) estimated based on Hough transform followed by a search algorithm in order to find the best set of parallel lines, which is supported by the vegetation. Example result from a sugar beet field with high weed pressure.

We implemented and tested our approach using different types of cameras and UAVs, on real sugar beet fields. Our experiments suggest that our proposed system is able to perform a classification of sugar beets and different weed types in RGB images captured by a commercial low cost UAV system. We show that the classification system achieves good performance in terms of overall accuracy of up to 96% even in images where neither a row detection of the crops nor a regular pattern of the plantation can be exploited for geometry-based detection. Furthermore, we evaluate our system using RGB+NIR images captured with a comparable expensive camera system to those obtained using the standard equipped RGB camera mounted on a consumer quad-copter (DJI Phantom 4 and camera for around $1,500). Fig. 5 depicts example results achieved on the different datasets respectively.

With our approach, we enable farmers to analyze the field status in terms of the spatial distribution of the crops and weeds on their field by using a low-cost UAV system, which can be used out-of-the-box. Typically, these systems are easy to use without requiring expertise on flying or aerial dynamics. The farmers only has to provide their expertise in terms of labeling into the perception pipeline. The farmers are predestined to perform this task because nobody knows better, which plants and weed types commonly appear on their specific fields. Compared to the area of the field only a small amount of data has to be labeled for analyzing the whole field. In terms of the usage withing autonomous robotic systems in agriculture this approach can be used as part of the perception pipeline of the system. Based on the classification results of the images taken by the UAV a program for decision making or planning can execute different task to achieve the destined goals, e.g. to send the UGV to a target location.

Figure 5: Zoomed view of images analyzed by our plant/weed classification system (left column) and corresponding ground truth images (right column). Top row: Multi-class results for the dataset captured by the DJI Phantom 4 UAV. Here, the crops do not follow a row structure. Thus, the results are based on the visual as well as geometric features. Center row: Result for the dataset captured with an 4-channel RGB+NIR camera system. Bottom row: Result for the dataset captured with a DJI Matrice 100 UAV. Arrows point to weeds detected in intra-row space. Sugar beet (green), chamomile (blue), saltbush (yellow) and other weeds (red).

Image: Alex Waller, MIT CSAIL

Being able to both walk and take flight is typical in nature – many birds, insects and other animals can do both. If we could program robots with similar versatility, it would open up many possibilities: picture machines that could fly into construction areas or disaster zones that aren’t near roads, and then be able to squeeze through tight spaces to transport objects or rescue people.

The problem is that usually robots that are good at one mode of transportation are, by necessity, bad at another. Drones are fast and agile, but generally have too limited of a battery life to travel for long distances. Ground vehicles, meanwhile, are more energy efficient, but also slower and less mobile.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are aiming to develop robots that can do both. In a new paper, the team presented a system of eight quadcopter drones that can both fly and drive through a city-like setting with parking spots, no-fly zones and landing pads.

“The ability to both fly and drive is useful in environments with a lot of barriers, since you can fly over ground obstacles and drive under overhead obstacles,” says PhD student Brandon Araki, lead author on a paper about the system out of CSAIL director Daniela Rus’ group. “Normal drones can’t maneuver on the ground at all. A drone with wheels is much more mobile while having only a slight reduction in flying time.”

Araki and Rus developed the system along with MIT undergraduate students John Strang, Sarah Pohorecky and Celine Qiu, as well as Tobias Naegeli of ETH Zurich’s Advanced Interactive Technologies Lab. The team presented their system at IEEE’s International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Singapore earlier this month.

How it works

The project builds on Araki’s previous work developing a “flying monkey” robot that crawls, grasps, and flies. While the monkey robot could hop over obstacles and crawl about, there was still no way for it to travel autonomously.

To address this, the team developed various “path-planning” algorithms aimed at ensuring that the drones don’t collide. To make them capable of driving, the team put two small motors with wheels on the bottom of each drone. In simulations the robots could fly for 90 meters or drive for 252 meters before their batteries ran out.

Adding the driving component to the drone slightly reduced its battery life, meaning that the maximum distance it could fly decreased 14 percent to about 300 feet. But since driving is still much more efficient than flying, the gain in efficiency from driving more than offsets the relatively small loss in efficiency in flying due to the extra weight.

“This work provides an algorithmic solution for large-scale, mixed-mode transportation and shows its applicability to real-world problems,” says Jingjin Yu, a computer science professor at Rutgers University who was not involved in the paper.

The team also tested the system using everyday materials like pieces of fabric for roads and cardboard boxes for buildings. They tested eight robots navigating from a starting point to an ending point on a collision-free path, and all were successful.

Rus says that systems like theirs suggest that another approach to creating safe and effective flying cars is not to simply “put wings on cars,” but to build on years of research in drone development to add driving capabilities to them.

“As we begin to develop planning and control algorithms for flying cars, we are encouraged by the possibility of creating robots with these capabilities at small scale,” says Rus. “While there are obviously still big challenges to scaling up to vehicles that could actually transport humans, we are inspired by the potential of a future in which flying cars could offer us fast, traffic-free transportation.”

Click here to read the paper.

Amazon’s “beehive” concept for future multi-storey fulfillment centers. Credit: Amazon

June 19, 2017 – June 25, 2017

At the Center for the Study of the Drone

In an interview with Robotics Tomorrow, Center for the Study of the Drone Co-Director Arthur Holland Michel discusses the growing use of drones by law enforcement and describes future trends in unmanned systems technology.

News

The U.S. State Department is set to approve the sale of 22 MQ-9B Guardian drones to India, according to Defense News. The sale is expected to be announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States. The Guardian is an unarmed variant of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator B. If the deal is approved and finalized, India would be the fifth country besides the U.S. and first non-NATO member to operate the MQ-9.

The United States shot down another armed Iranian drone in Syria. A U.S. F-15 fighter jet intercepted the Shahed-129 drone near the town of Tanf, where the U.S.-led coalition is training Syrian rebel forces. The shootdown comes just days after the U.S. downed another Shahed-129 on June 8, as well as a Syrian SU-22 manned fighter jet on June 18. (Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the Pakistani air force shot down an Iranian drone. According to Nafees Zakaria, the unarmed surveillance drone was downed 2.5 miles inside Pakistani territory in the southwest Baluchistan province. (Associated Press)

A U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk drone crashed in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. The RQ-4 is a high-altitude long-endurance surveillance drone. (KTLA5)

The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate introduced bills to reauthorize funding for the Federal Aviation Administration. Both bills include language on drones. The Senate bill would require all drone operators to pass an aeronautical knowledge test and would authorize the FAA to require that drone operators be registered. (Law360)

President Trump spoke with the CEOs of drone companies at the White House as part of a week focused on emerging technologies. Participants discussed a number of topics, including state and local drone laws and drone identification and tracking technologies. (TechCrunch)

The Pentagon will begin offering an award for remote weapons strikes to Air Force personnel in a variety of career fields, including cyber and space. The “R” device award was created in 2016 to recognize drone operators. (Military.com)

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has formed a committee to study electronic drone identification methods and technologies. The new committee is comprised of representatives from industry, government, and law enforcement. (Press Release)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At MarketWatch, Sally French writes that in the meeting at the White House, some CEOs of drone companies argued for more, not fewer, drone regulations. (MarketWatch)

At Air & Space Magazine, James R. Chiles writes that the crowded airspace above Syria could lead to the first drone-on-drone air war.

At Popular Science, Kelsey D. Atherton looks at how fighter jets of the future will be accompanied by swarms of low-cost armed drones.  

At Drone360, Leah Froats breaks down the different drone bills that have recently been introduced in Congress.

At Motherboard, Ben Sullivan writes that drone pilots are “buying Russian software to hack their way past DJI’s no fly zones.”

At Bloomberg Technology, Thomas Black writes that the future of drone delivery hinges on precise weather predictions.

At Aviation Week, James Drew writes that U.S. lawmakers are encouraging the Air Force to conduct a review of the different MQ-9 Reaper models that it plans to purchase.  

Also at Aviation Week, Tony Osborne writes that studies show that European governments are advancing the implementation of drone regulations.

At The Atlantic, Marina Koren looks at how artificial intelligence helps the Curiosity rover navigate the surface of Mars without any human input.

At Phys.org, Renee Cho considers how drones are helping advance scientific research.

At Ozy, Zara Stone writes that drones are helping to accelerate the time it takes to complete industrial painting jobs.

At the European Council on Foreign Relations, Ulrike Franke argues that instead of following the U.S. example, Europe should develop its own approach to acquiring military drones.

At the New York Times, Frank Bures looks at how a U.S. drone pilot is helping give the New Zealand team an edge in the America’s Cup.

At Cinema5D, Jakub Han examines how U.S. drone pilot Robert Mcintosh created an intricate single-shot fly-through video in Los Angeles.

Know Your Drone

Amazon has filed a patent for multi-storey urban fulfilment centers for its proposed drone delivery program. (CNN)

Airbus Helicopters has begun autonomous flight trials of its VSR700 optionally piloted helicopter demonstrator. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Italian defense firm Leonardo unveiled the M-40, a target drone that can mimic the signatures of a number of aircraft types. (FlightGlobal)

Defense firm Textron Systems unveiled the Nightwarden, a new variant of its Shadow tactical surveillance and reconnaissance drone. (New Atlas)

Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems unveiled the SkEye, a wide-area persistent surveillance sensor that can be used aboard drones. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have developed a WiFi-based  system that allows drones to see through solid walls. (TechCrunch)

Israeli drone maker Aeronautics unveiled the Pegasus 120, a multirotor drone designed for a variety of roles. (IHS Jane’s 360)  

U.S. firm Raytheon has developed a new variant of its Coyote, a tube-launched aerial data collection drone. (AIN Online)

Drone maker Boeing Insitu announced that it has integrated a 50-megapixel photogrammetric camera into a variant of its ScanEagle fixed-wing drone. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Telecommunications giant AT&T is seeking to develop a system to mount drones on ground vehicles. (Atlanta Business Chronicle)

U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman demonstrated an unmanned surface vehicle in a mine-hunting exercise in Belgium. (AUVSI)

Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems unveiled a new radar and laser-based counter-drone system called Drone Dome. (UPI)

French firm Reflet du Monde unveiled the RDM One, a small drone that can be flown at ranges of up to 300 kilometers thanks to a satellite link. (Defense News)

RE2 Robotics is helping the U.S. Air Force build robots that can take the controls of traditionally manned aircraft. (TechCrunch)

The U.S. Marine Corps is set to begin using its Nibbler 3D-printed drone in active combat zones in the coming weeks. (3D Printing Industry)

U.S. drone maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has completed a design review for its Advanced Cockpit Block 50 Ground Control Station for U.S. Air Force drones. (UPI)

Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center are developing systems for small drones that allows them to determine on their own if they are suffering from mechanical issues and find a place to land safely. (Wired)

The inventor of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner has unveiled an unmanned ground vehicle that autonomously finds and removes weeds from your garden. (Business Insider)

Drones at Work

A group of public safety agencies in Larimer County, Colorado have unveiled a regional drone program. (The Coloradoan)

Five marijuana growing operations in California will begin using unmanned ground vehicles for security patrols. (NBC Los Angeles)

The Fargo Fire Department in North Dakota has acquired a drone for a range of operations. (KFGO)

The Rochester Police Department in Minnesota has acquired a drone for monitoring patients suffering from Alzheimer’s and other disorders. (Associated Press)

Drone maker Parrot and software firm Pix4D have selected six researchers using drones to study the impacts of climate change as the winners of an innovation grant. (Unmanned Aerial Online)

The Coconino County Sheriff’s Office and the Flagstaff Police Department used an unmanned ground vehicle to enter the home of a man who had barricaded himself in a standoff. (AZ Central)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Special Operations Command awarded Boeing Insitu and Textron Systems contracts to compete for the Mid-Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems III drone program. (AIN Online)

The U.S. Navy awarded Arête Associates a $8.5 million contract for the AN/DVS-1 COBRA, a payload on the MQ-8 Fire Scout. (DoD)

The U.S. Army awarded Raytheon a $2.93 million contract for Kinetic Drone Defense. (FBO)

The Spanish Defense Ministry selected the AUDS counter-drone system for immediate deployments. The contract is estimated to be worth $2.24 million. (GSN Magazine)

The European Maritime Safety Agency selected the UMS Skeldar for border control, search and rescue, pollution monitoring, and other missions. (FlightGlobal)

The Belgian Navy awarded SeeByte, a company that creates software for unmanned maritime systems, a contract for the SeeTrack software system for its autonomous undersea vehicles. (Marine Technology News)

A new company established by the Turkish government will build engines for the armed Anka drone. (DefenseNews)

Italian defense firm Leonardo is seeking to market its Falco UAV for commercial applications. (Shephard Media)  

Thales Alenia Space will acquire a minority stake in Airstar Aerospace, which it hopes will help it achieve its goal of developing an autonomous, high-altitude airship. (Intelligent Aerospace)

The Idaho STEM Action Center awarded 22 schools and libraries in Idaho $147,000 to purchase drones. (East Idaho News)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

Credit: Aurora Flight Sciences.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is researching autonomous co-piloting so they can fly without a human pilot on board. The robotic system — called the Common Aircraft Retrofit for Novel Autonomous Control (CARNAC) (not to be confused with the old Johnny Carson Carnac routine) — has the potential to reduce costs, enable new missions, and improve performance.

CARNAC, the Johnny Carson version.

Unmanned aircraft are generally built from scratch with robotic systems integrated from the earliest design stages. Existing aircraft require extensive modification to add robotic systems.

RE2, the CMU spin-off located in Pittsburgh, makes mobile manipulators for defense and space. They just received an SBIR loan backed by a US Air Force development contract to develop a retrofit kit that would provide a robotic piloting solution for legacy aircraft.

“Our team is excited to incorporate the Company’s robotic manipulation expertise with proven technologies in applique systems, vision processing algorithms, and decision making to create a customized application that will allow a wide variety of existing aircraft to be outfitted with a robotic pilot,” stated Jorgen Pedersen, president and CEO of RE2 Robotics. “By creating a drop-in robotic pilot, we have the ability to insert autonomy into and expand the capabilities of not only traditionally manned air vehicles, but ground and underwater vehicles as well. This application will open up a whole new market for our mobile robotic manipulator systems.”

Aurora Flight Sciences, a Manassas, VA developer of advanced unmanned systems and aerospace vehicles, is working on another similar DARPA project, Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS), and is designed as a drop-in avionics and mechanics package that can be quickly and cheaply fitted to a wide variety of fixed and rotor aircraft, from a Cessna to a B-52. Once installed, ALIAS is able to analyze the aircraft and adapt itself to the job of the second pilot.

Credit: Aurora Flight Sciences

Photo credit: Pierre-Yves Guernier

Technology-driven automation plays a critical role in the global economy, and its visibility in our lives is growing. As technology impacts more and more jobs, individuals and enterprises find themselves wondering what effect the current wave of automation will have on their future economic prospects.

WeRobotics Global has become a premier forum for social good robotics. The feedback featured below was unsolicited. On June 1, 2017, we convened our first, annual global event, bringing together 34 organizations to New York City (full list below) to shape the global agenda and future use of robotics in the social good sector.  WeRobotics Global was kindly hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation, the first donor to support our efforts. They opened the event with welcome remarks and turned it over to Patrick Meier from WeRobotics who provided an overview of WeRobotics and the big picture context for social sector robotics.

I’ve been to countless remote sensing conferences over the past 30 years but WeRobotics Global absolutely ranks as the best event I’ve been to – Remote Sensing Expert

The event was really mind-blowing. I’ve participated in many workshops over the past 20 years. WeR Global was by far the most insightful and practical. It is also amazing how closely together everyone is working — irrespective of who is working where (NGO, UN, private sector, donor). I’ve never seen such a group of people come together this away. – Humanitarian Professional

WeRobotics Global is completely different to any development meeting or workshop I’ve been to in recent years. The discussions flowed seamlessly between real world challenges, genuine bottom-up approaches and appropriate technology solutions. Conversations were always practical and strikingly transparent. This was a highly unusual event. – International Donor

The first panel featured our Flying Labs Coordinators from Tanzania (Yussuf), Peru (Juan) and Nepal (Uttam). Each shared the hard work they’ve been doing over the past 6-10 months on localizing and applying robotics solutions. Yussuf spoke about the lab’s use of aerial robotics for disaster damage assessment following the earthquake in Bukoba and for coastal monitoring, environmental monitoring and forestry management. He emphasized the importance of community engagement and closed with new projects that Tanzania Flying Labs is working on such as mangrove monitoring for the Department of Forestry. Juan presented the work of the labs in the Amazon Rainforest, which is a joint effort with the Peruvian Ministry of Health. Together, they are field-testing the use of affordable and locally repairable flying robots for the delivery of antivenom and other medical payload between local clinics and remote villages. Juan noted that Peru Flying Labs is gearing up to carry out a record number of flight tests this summer using a larger and more diverse fleet of flying robots. Last but not least, Uttam showed how Nepal Flying Labs has been using flying robots for agriculture monitoring, damage assessment and mapping of property rights. He also gave an overview of the social entrepreneurship training and business plan competition recently organized by Nepal Flying Labs. This business incubation training has resulted in the launch of 4 new Nepali start-up companies focused on Robotics-as-a-Service. 

The following images provide highlights from each of our Flying Labs: Tanzania, Peru and Nepal.

The second panel featured talks on sector based solutions starting with the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC). The Federation (Aarathi) spoke about their joint project with WeRobotics; looking at cross-sectoral needs for various robotics solutions in the South Pacific. IFRC is exploring at the possibility of launching a South Pacific Flying Labs with a strong focus on women and girls. Pix4D (Lorenzo) addressed the role of aerial robotics in agriculture, giving concrete examples of successful applications while providing guidance to our Flying Labs Coordinators. The Wall Street Journal (Sally) spoke about the use of aerial robotics in news gathering and investigative journalism. She specifically emphasized the importance of using flying robots for storytelling. Duke Marine Labs (David) closed the panel with an overview of their projects in nature conservation and marine life protection, highlighting their use of machine learning for automated feature detection for real-time analysis.

Panel number three addressed the transformation of transportation. UNICEF (Judith) highlighted the field tests they have been carrying out in Malawi; using cargo robotics to transport HIV samples in order to accelerate HIV testing and thus treatment. UNICEF has also launched an air corridor in Malawi to enable further field-testing of flying robots. MSF (Oriol) shared their approach to cargo delivery using aerial robotics. They shared examples from Papua New Guinea (PNG) and emphasized the importance of localizing appropriate robotics solutions that can be maintained locally. MSF also called for the launch of PNG Flying Labs. IAEA was unable to attend WeR Global, so Patrick and Adam from WeRobotics gave the talk instead. WeRobotics is teaming up with IAEA to design and test a release mechanism for sterilized mosquitos in order to reduce the incidence of Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses. More here. Finally, Llamasoft (Sid) closed the panel with a strong emphasis on the need to collect and share structured data to accurately carry out comparative cost-benefit-analyses of cargo delivery via flying robots versus conventional means. Sid used the analogy of self-driving cars to highlight how problematic the current lack of data vis-a-vis reliably evaluating the impact of cargo robotics.

The fourth and final panel went beyond aerial robotics. Digger (Thomas) showed how they convert heavy construction vehicles into semi-autonomous platforms to clear landmines and debris in conflict zones like Iraq and Syria. Science in the Wild (Ulyana) was alas unable to attend the event, so Patrick from WeRobotics gave the talk instead. This focused on the use of swimming robots to monitor glacial lakes in the Himalaya. The purpose of the effort is to identify cracks in the lake floors before they trigger what local villagers call the tsunamis of the Himalaya. OpenROV (David) gave a talk on the use of diving robots, sharing real-world examples and providing exciting updates on the new Trident diving robot. Planet Labs (Andrew) gave the closing talk, highlighting how space robotics (satellites) are being used across a wide range of social good projects. He emphasized the importance of integrating both aerial and satellite imagery to support social good projects.

The final session at WeR Global comprised breakout groups to identify next steps for WeRobotics and the social good sector more broadly. Many quality insights and recommendations were shared during the report back. One such recommendation was to hold WeR Global again, and sooner rather than later. So we look forward to organizing WeRobotics Global 2018. We will be providing updates via our blog and email list. We will also use our blog and email list to share select videos of the individual talks from Global 2017 along with their respective slide decks.

In the meantime, a big thanks to all participants and speakers for making Global 2017 such an unforgettable event. And sincerest thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation for hosting us at their headquarters in New York City.

The Missile Defense Agency is seeking a high-altitude unmanned aircraft that can be equipped with a high-energy laser. Credit: MDA

June 12, 2017 – June 18, 2017

News

A U.S. drone strike in Yemen reportedly killed two individuals suspected of being members of al-Qaeda. The strike targeted a vehicle in Shabwa province, one of several strongholds of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. (Reuters)

The European Union released draft regulations for consumer and commercial drones. The blueprint was assembled by the Single European Sky Air traffic management Research Joint Undertaking, a body set up by the European Commission to study low-altitude drone operations. The EU plans to implement drone regulations by 2019. (Press Release)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

A report by the Center for a New American Security explores possible policies designed to manage military drone proliferation.

A report by the Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies evaluates the U.S. government’s transparency on drone strikes between 2002 and 2017.

At Fast Company, Steven Melendez considers how the next generation of military drones and autonomous systems could change warfare.

At the National Interest, David Axe writes that the U.S. Air Force is planning to invest more in disposable strike drones than large complex systems.

Also at the National Interest, Dan Goure looks at how U.S. companies are focusing on ending the threat posed by rogue drone use.

At the Washington Post, Thomas Gibbons-Neff writes that U.S. officials are concerned about the ability of ISIS drones to disrupt U.S. operations.

At Lawfare, Rebecca Crootof and Frauke Renz argue that the conversation surrounding lethal autonomous weapons should seek alternative regulatory strategies beyond an outright ban.

At TechCrunch, Brian Heater looks at how RE2 Robotics is making robot control mechanisms more intuitive.

At Inc.com, Will Yakowicz writes that Saildrone, a California-based startup, aims to deploy more unmanned sailboats to measure climate change than all of the satellites in space.

A study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that defibrillator-carrying drones could cut response times for cardiac arrests by 16 minutes. (The Guardian)

An essay at the Economist explores how consumer drones are being put to work for commercial applications.  

At iRevolutions.org, Patrick Meier looks at how flying robots could be used to combat the spread of Zika.

At the University of Toronto, students and faculty discuss the opportunities presented by the development of advanced autonomy for consumer drones.

At KSHB, Belinda Post writes that drones are a popular father’s day gift this year.

At AIN Online, Vladimir Karnozov considers the history of Iranian-Russian collaboration on the development of new drones.

Know Your Drone

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is looking to acquire a high-altitude long-endurance drone that can carry a high-energy laser to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Drone maker RaptorUAS has unveiled the Raptor EV, a vertical takeoff and landing fixed-wing drone. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

U.S. drone maker Kratos is unveiling its two new low-cost combat drones, the XQ-222 Valkyrie and the UTAP-22 Mako. (New Atlas)

The U.S. Air Force is conducting a study to estimate the service life of its MQ-9 Reaper drones. (Defense Daily)

Airbus Defence and Space will conduct test flights of its Zephyr high-altitude long-endurance drone in Australia next year. (Shephard Media)

U.K. firm Horizon Technologies is looking to mount a satellite phone monitoring sensor on small drones. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Researchers at Nvidia are developing drone navigation systems that rely on computer vision rather than GPS signals. (The Drive)

Amazon has been awarded two patents for its delivery drone system: one for foldable rotor arms and the other for a winch system to lower packages from the drone to the ground. (GeekWire)

Drones at Work

South Korean officials said that a North Korean drone that crashed in the country had taken 10 photographs of a sensitive U.S. missile defense site. (The Washington Post)

A search and rescue team in Colorado used a newly acquired drone to search for a group of missing hikers. (CBS4)

General Electric has begun a program to test drones and unmanned ground vehicles to inspect industrial facilities and infrastructure. (Reuters)

The Croatian Defense Ministry is planning to acquire drones and set up an unmanned aircraft squadron. (Defense News)

Drone Delivery Canada conducted the first beyond visual line of sight delivery test flights in Canada, flying a drone in Alberta from a control center 2,500 kilometers away in Toronto. (AUVSI)

Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice show that there have been more than a dozen attempts to smuggle contraband into federal prisons using drones in the past five years. (USA Today)

Firefighters in London used a drone to assist in the response to the Grenfell Tower fire. (Newsweek)

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating reports of illegal drone operations in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Charlotte Observer)

The California National Guard has relocated its fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones from Victorville to the March Air Reserve Base. (Aviation Week)  

Security officials used a Dedrone counter-drone system at the Golden State Warriors’ basketball team’s championship parade in Oakland, California. (Recode)

Massachusetts police used drones for security during the Sail Boston boating event. (Boston Globe)

The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office in New Jersey bought a drone for criminal investigations. (TAP into Piscataway)

The Israeli air force is developing a 15-year roadmap for its fleet of unmanned aircraft. (FlightGlobal)

Police are searching for a drone operator who flew a drone close to air tankers and helicopters assisting in the response to a California brush fire. (10News)

The U.S. Navy picked the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS George H.W. Bush as the first two aircraft carriers to deploy the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned refueler drone. (USNI News)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Navy awarded Boeing Insitu an $8 million contract for one RQ-21A Blackjack unmanned aircraft system for the Marine Corps. (DoD)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Raytheon a $5.2 million contract for the Aerial Dragnet program.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Embry-Riddle and Creare a $1 million grant to develop an autonomous flight control system for drones. (Press Release)

The Drone Racing League raised $20 million in grants from Allianz and Sky. (The Telegraph)

Kraken is partnering with Atlas Elektronik to develop a system for the Royal Canadian Navy’s Remote Mine Disposal System requirement. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Laura Ponto, an executive at Alphabet’s Project Wing, is the new chairman of the Commercial Drone Alliance, an industry advocacy organization. (Recode)

Israel’s Aeronautics, a drone manufacturer, has made an initial public offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. (IHS Jane’s 360)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

Our partners at the joint FAO/IAEA Insect Pest Control Lab in Vienna, Austria have been working to perfect the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) in order to sterilize and release male mosquitos in Zika hotspots. Releasing millions of said male mosquitos increases competition for female mosquitos, making it more difficult for non-sterilized males to find a mate.

We learned last year at a USAID Co-Ideation Workshop that this technique can reduce the overall mosquito population in a given area by 90%. The way this works is by releasing millions of sterilized mosquitos using cars, helicopters and/or planes, or even backpacks.

Our approach seeks to complement and extend (not replace) these existing delivery methods. The challenge with manned aircraft is that they are expensive to operate and maintain. They may also not be able to target areas with great accuracy given the altitudes they have to fly at.
Cars are less expensive, but they rely on ground infrastructure. This can be a challenge in some corners of the world when roads become unusable due to rainy seasons or natural disasters. What’s more, not everyone lives on or even close to a road.

Our IAEA colleagues thus envision establishing small mosquito breeding labs in strategic regions in order to release sterilized male mosquitos and reduce the overall mosquito population in select hotspots. The idea would be to use both ground and aerial release methods with cars and flying robots.

The real technical challenge here, besides breeding millions of sterilized mosquitos, is actually not the flying robot (drone/UAV) but rather the engineering that needs to go into developing a release mechanism that attaches to the flying robot. In fact, we’re more interested in developing a release mechanism that will work with any number of flying robots, rather than having a mechanism work with one and only one drone/UAV. Aerial robotics is evolving quickly and it is inevitable that drones/UAVs available in 6-12 months will have greater range and payload capacity than today. So we don’t want to lock our release mechanism into a platform that may be obsolete by the end of the year. So for now we’re just using a DJI Matrice M600 Pro so we can focus on engineering the release mechanism.

Developing this release mechanism is anything but trivial. Ironically, mosquitos are particularly fragile. So if they get damaged while being released, game over. What’s more, in order to pack one million mosquitos (about 2.5kg in weight) into a particularly confined space, they need to be chilled or else they’ll get into a brawl and damage each other, i.e., game over. (Recall the last time you were stuck in the middle seat in Economy class on a transcontinental flight). This means that the release mechanism has to include a reliable cooling system. But wait, there’s more. We also need to control the rate of release, i.e., to control how many thousands of mosquitos are released per unit of space and time in order to drop said mosquitos in a targeted and homogenous manner. Adding to the challenge is the fact that mosquitos need time to unfreeze during free fall so they can fly away and do their thing, i.e., before they hit the ground or else, game over.

We’ve already started testing our early prototype using “mosquito substitutes” like cumin and anise as the latter came recommended by mosquito experts. Next month, we’ll be at the FAO/IAEA Pest Control Lab in Vienna to test the release mechanism indoors using dead and live mosquitos. We’ll then have 3 months to develop a second version of the prototype before heading to Latin America to field test the release mechanism with our Peru Flying Labs. One of these tests will involve the the integration of the flying robot and the release mechanism in terms of both hardware and software. In other words, we’ll be testing the integrated system over different types of terrain and weather conditions in Peru specifically.

We are already developing the mission control app pictured above to program our autonomous flights. The app will let the operator decide how many sterilized mosquitos to release at any given time and location. Our field tests in Peru will also seek to identify the optimal flight parameters for the targeted and homogenous delivery of sterilized mosquitos. For example, what is the optimal speed and altitude of the flying robot to ensure that the mosquitos are released over the intended areas?

Our Peru Flying Labs has already developed expertise and capacity in cargo drone delivery, most recently in projects in the Amazon Rainforest with the Ministry of Health (more here). This new Zika reduction project –and in particularly the upcoming field tests — will enable us to further build our Peruvian team’s capacity in cargo space. The plan is for Peru Flying Labs to operate the flying robots and release mechanisms as need once we have a more robust version of the release mechanism. The vision here is to have a fleet of flying robots at our Flying Labs equipped with release mechanisms in order to collectively release millions of sterilized mosquitos over relatively large areas. And because our Peruvian colleagues are local, they can rapidly deploy as needed.

For now, though, our WeRobotics Engineering Team (below) is busy developing the prototype out of our Zurich office. So if you happen to be passing through, definitely let us know, we’d love to show you the latest and give you a demo. We’ll also be reaching out the Technical University of Peru who are members of our Peru Flying Labs to engage with their engineers as we get closer to the field tests in country.

As an aside, our USAID colleagues recently encouraged us to consider an entirely separate, follow up project totally independently of IAEA whereby we’d be giving rides to Wolbachia treated mosquitos. Wolbachia is the name of bacteria that is used to infect male mosquitos so they can’t reproduce. IAEA does not focus on Wolbachia at all, but other USAID grantees do. Point being, the release mechanism could have multiple applications. For example, instead of releasing mosquitos, the mechanism could scatter seeds. Sound far-fetched? Think again.

This original blog post can be found on WeRobotics website here.

Photo: Cirque du Soleil – PARAMOUR on Broadway – at the Lyric Theatre. Featuring Flying Machine Design and Choreography by Verity Studios. Pictured: Ruby Lewis as ‘Indigo’ Ryan Vona as ‘Joey’. ©, Cirque du Soleil Theatrical. Photo by: Richard Termine

Over the past year, 398 audiences of up to 2,000 people witnessed an octet of colorful lampshades perform an airborne choreography during Cirque du Soleil’s Broadway show Paramour, which ran until April 20^th. The work behind the design and choreography of the flying lampshades, which turn out to be self-piloted show drones, bears the signature of the Swiss high-tech company Verity Studios.

But how novel is it really that robots have appeared in theater? Since Karel Capek’s science fiction play R.U.R. (short for Rossum’s Universal Robots) introduced the word “robot” to the English language and to science fiction almost 100 years ago, the technical challenges of incorporating robots into live performance and theater have been difficult to master. Before these Broadway drones, nearly all theater robots were remote-controlled puppets, relying on humans hidden off-scene to steer their movements and provide their intelligence.

Photo: © Verity Studios. Photographer: Federico Augugliaro

Placing intelligent, autonomous flying machines in live theater presents a multi-faceted challenge: creating a compelling performance with safety, reliability, and ease of operation. While the compelling performance translates into shaping a convincing creative concept around the drones’ choreography, the latter chiefly points to designing computerized systems in lieu of making use of human pilots: Verity Studios’ show drones are flying mobile robots and navigate autonomously, piloting themselves, only supervised by a human operator. To navigate autonomously, these drones require a reliable method for determining their position in space. Since GPS is usually not available indoors, Verity Studios has built on more than a decade of research and development to provide a novel localization method.

The first groups of autonomous robots are now meeting the live event industries’ high requirements: Initially, Verity Studios set the stage for widely recognized flying machines in entertainment in 2014, by collaborating with Cirque de Soleil on Sparked, a short film in which 10 siblings of the similarly dressed 8 quadcopters from Paramour dance, hover, and flicker around a stunned human actor. Sparked was named a Winner of the 2016 New York City Drone Film Festival. However, it is one thing to feature drones in a 4-minute video, where the makers have the luxury to shoot it 100 times and then choose the best shot. Live performances on Broadway running 8 times per week in front of up to 2,000 people every time, by contrast, require the drone shows to work every single time. Verity Studios has met these requirements in the following sense: During their one-year run, the drones on Broadway safely completed more than 7,000 autonomous take-offs, flights, and landings. How was that possible?

Performance and reliability are key to Paramour’s dancing drones which are custom-made and hand-crafted in Switzerland. Each of the eight flying machines featured in Paramour uses 80 sensors to fly and performs roughly 1.5 billion calculations per second. Each critical calculation is double-checked every time it is performed in case any of the concerned processors makes a mistake. In other words, accidents are prevented by self-test and monitoring. And even if something does happen, a back-up is in place. For example, on the show of 2017-02-08, the battery from one of the eight vehicles could not provide sufficient power during the takeoff phase. The quadrocopter detected the problem and safely returned to the ground on only two propellers. The other seven continued the show unaffected.

Photo: © Verity Studios. Photographer: Federico Augugliaro

The failure of a single system component has never resulted in an unmanaged loss of control, but was handled appropriately. Each show drone is programmed to land in a controlled fashion despite a failure of any one of its motors, any part of its electronics, any one of its cables or connectors, and any one of its batteries. Similarly, the system has been designed in a way that a loss of communication between a drone and its ground station has created a dangerous situation. This is achieved by creating a fully redundant system, i.e., a system that can continue operation, or trigger a safe emergency behavior, if any one of its components fails. While such designs can be more expensive to create than designs without duplication, they provide much higher safety (and help reduce insurance costs). Their decades-long history in the manned aviation industry has shown this approach’s effectiveness and provides a treasure trove of experience and evidence for the emerging drone industry.

One way to design such a redundant system is to first design a simple flight-capable system, to then duplicate all its components (e.g. sensors, processors, actuators) to achieve the necessary redundancy, and to carefully design switch-over from a failed system to its backup. Importantly, the design of such a system cannot stop with the design of fully redundant drones, but needs to extend to all other critical components of the drone show system, including the positioning system, communications architecture, e-stop systems, and control stations. In the end, this uncompromising approach allows for a degree of safety and robustness that makes those intelligent and autonomous robots suitable for performance next to theater audiences.

At Paramour, the result was a one-of-a-kind performance that extended the traditional palette of light, sound, stage effects, and interaction with human performers by translating an intimate character beat into an unexpected visual motif. The enticing reality is that there are many more areas to explore, ranging from live concerts to active scenography, that offer dramatic possibilities for performing robots on a much broader scale. For more information, have a look at Verity Studios’ drone show systems, the work of Verity Studios’ drone costume designer or subscribe to Verity Studios’ newsletter.

Photo: © Verity Studios. Photographer: Federico Augugliaro

Republic of Singapore Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Brian Neo and Seaman Apprentice Kenneth Seah, both assigned to Mine Countermeasures 194 Squadron, recover an unmanned underwater vehicle during the Western Pacific Naval Symposium Diving Exercise (WPNS-DIVEX) 2017 off the coast of Guam June 12, 2017. WPNS-DIVEX 2017 is a biennial diving exercise conducted by WPNS nations to enhance cooperation, interoperability, and tactical proficiency in diving operations in support of disaster response. (U.S. Navy Combat Camera photo by Information Systems Technician 1st Class Ledget Glover III)

June 5, 2017 – June 11, 2017

At the Center for the Study of the Drone

At Washington D.C.’s WTOP radio, Center for the Study of the Drone co-director Dan Gettinger discusses the growing use of drones by public safety agencies in the U.S.

News

A U.S. drone strike reportedly killed eight individuals at an al-Shabab command post in southern Somalia. It is believed to be the first U.S. drone strike in Somalia since President Trump relaxed rules for targeting al-Shabab militants. (New York Times)

Canada announced that it is moving ahead with its acquisition of strike-capable drones. The planned acquisition is part of a $62 billion investment in new military systems and technologies. In a press conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that the government will carefully review how to best use the drones prior to deployment. (CBC)

Alphabet will sell Boston Dynamics, which makes quadruped and bipedal robots, as well as robotics firm Schaft, to SoftBank Group, a Japanese telecommunications corporation. Boston Dynamics has become well-known for developing advanced, dexterous robots. Alphabet acquired Boston Dynamics in 2013 and Schaft in 2014. (Recode)

A U.S. fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone near the Al Tanf border crossing between Syria and Iraq. In a statement, the U.S.-led coalition said that the drone had earlier attacked U.S. allies on the ground and that it was approximately the size of a U.S. MQ-1 Predator, indicating that it was likely a Shahed-129 drone. A variety of Iranian drones have supported pro-regime forces in Syria since at least 2012. (The Daily Beast) For more on the drones operating in Syria and Iraq, click here.

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

In an in-depth interview at Drone Wars UK, a former British drone pilot discusses his experience flying the MQ-9 Reaper.

Meanwhile, at Over the Horizon, U.S. Air Force Colonel Joseph Campo discusses U.S. drone operations and the psychological toll of those operations on drone pilots.

At the MIT Technology Review, Jonathan W. Rosen looks at how Zipline’s drones are reducing the time it takes to deliver blood to remote medical facilities in Rwanda.

The WeRobotics Global conference featured several panels that considered the use of unmanned systems for humanitarian and conservation purposes. (iRevolutions)

At Recode, April Glaser writes that the Trump administration’s plan to privatize air traffic control could accelerate the push to develop a national drone tracking system.

Meanwhile, at Business Insider, Jonathan Camhi writes that it may be difficult for privately-organized drone air traffic control systems to make it to market.

At IEEE Spectrum, David Schneider looks at some failed drone bills and asks why they never became laws.

DRONEII.com considers the different energy sources available for drones and alternatives to the popular Li-Po batteries.

In a study published in the online Journal of Unmanned Vehicle Systems, Paul Nesbit examines the growing number of close encounters between drones and manned aircraft in Canada. (Phys.org)

In a paper published in the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, David R. Green and Cristina Gomez argue that drones are especially useful for pipeline monitoring.  

In the Georgetown Security Studies Review, Shannon Dick considers the U.S. targeted killing program in the context of Just War Theory.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s 2017 report on Chinese military capabilities highlights China’s progress in developing and exporting drones. (PDF)  For more on China’s drones, click here.

At TechCrunch, Brian Heater looks at how the Robust Adaptive Systems Lab at Carnegie Mellon is developing drones and robots that can work alongside humans.

At CBC, Kyle Bakx visits a village in Canada that is seeking to transform itself into a hub for companies that develop and test drones.

At Radio New Zealand, Roy Olsson, the head of the ICARUS project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, discusses the future of disposable drones.

A comic strip at xkcd considers the challenges of countering drones. (xkcd)

Know Your Drone

NASA successfully tested five drones in a number of scenarios as part of its unmanned aircraft traffic management system program. (Military Embedded Systems)

Meanwhile, Alphabet conducted a live test of its developmental air traffic control system for drones. (MIT Technology Review)

California startup Airspace Systems has unveiled a drone designed to hunt and catch rogue drones. (Forbes)

Turkish defense firm Meteksan Savunma has developed the country’s first indigenous automatic takeoff and landing system for drones. (Defense News)

Amazon has been awarded a patent for a safety system for its delivery drones that shuts off the aircraft’s rotors if it detects an imminent collision. (Drone Life)

U.S. drone maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems is planning to demonstrate an ultra high-speed laser satellite communication link for drones as well as a drone-mounted high-power kill laser. (Aviation Week)  

U.K. technology firm Wirth Research has unveiled a hydrogen-powered vertical take-off and landing mapping drone. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Researchers at Georgia Tech are developing the Miniature Autonomous Blimp, an indoor unmanned blimp that has a camera that can detect faces and autonomously follow individuals. (IEEE Spectrum)

Researchers at MIT have developed a small low-cost gas powered drone that can remain aloft for up to five days at a time. (New Atlas)

The China Electronics Technology Group Corporation conducted a flight test of a swarm of 119 small drones. (The Economic Times)   

Several Japanese shipbuilders and shipping firms are partnering to develop remote controlled cargo ships. (The Guardian)

French drone maker Delair-Tech conducted a beyond-line-of-sight flight of a commercial drone at a distance of 30 miles. (Drone Life)

Undersea drone maker Robosea has unveiled the BIKI, a small remote controlled unmanned undersea vehicle. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Drones at Work

The city of Garfield in New Jersey is revising a recently adopted drone ordinance after it was found to contravene FAA authority. (NorthJersey.com) For more on local drone laws, click here.

Navajo County sheriff’s deputies in Arizona used a drone to assist in the search for a man who went missing in a local forest. (White Mountain Independent)

A group of women in Majorca, Spain claim that a drone spied on them while they were sunbathing on a boat. (The Telegraph)

A man in Mountain View, California crashed a drone into a high voltage power line, causing a power outage that affected 1,600 people. (San Francisco Chronicle)

New Zealand’s first drone store opened to large crowds in Auckland. (News Hub)

A Hezbollah TV channel has broadcast footage of what it claims shows U.S. drone that was filmed by an Iranian drone over southeast Syria. (Reuters)

Officials in Fiji are planning to use drones to assist with the country’s 2017 census. (Fiji Sun)

A helicopter operated by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina was involved in a close encounter incident with a drone. (WSOCTV)

Meanwhile, aerial firefighting operations over the Lizard Fire in Arizona were interrupted for four hours after a drone was spotted in the airspace over the fire. (Sierra Vista Herald)

The Philippines has been revealed to be an operator of the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle drone. (IHS Jane’s 360)

South Korea has found what it claims to be a North Korean surveillance drone near the border between the two countries. (Reuters)

Police in Lawrenceville, Georgia are planning to purchase a drone for a range of operations. (AJC.com)

In Nepal, the Kanjirowa-Bullis STEM project tested a drone near Mt Everest at a high altitude. (The Himalayan Times)

An Australian filmmaker has been charged with jeopardizing Cambodia’s national security after he flew a drone over an election rally. (The Phnom Penh Post)

Australian computer vision firm Sentient Vision has announced that its Kestrel automated surveillance system will be deployed aboard the Australian Defence Force’s AeroVironment Wasp tactical drones. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Researchers used an autonomous boat to obtain data from an acidic crater lake at the Poás Volcano in Costa Rica. (The Atlantic)

Industry intel

The European Commission officially launched the 5.5 billion Euro European Defence Fund, which will include funding for unmanned systems development and acquisition. (Press Release)

Japanese investor Kotaro Chiba launched the $9 million DroneFund to invest in drone startups. (The Bridge)

The U.S. Navy awarded Academi Training Center, Insitu, PAE ISR, and AAI contracts for sea and land-based drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The total value of the contracts is $1.73 billion. (DoD)

The U.S. Special Operations Command awarded AAI Corp. a multiple award with a $475 million maximum order ceiling for Mid-Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems. (DoD)

The U.S. Special Operations Command awarded Insitu a multiple award with a $475 million maximum order ceiling for Mid-Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems. (DoD)

The U.S. Air Force awarded SpaceX a contract to launch the X-37B unmanned spacecraft in August. (Reuters)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Radio Hill Technologies a $2.5 million contract for 100 Block 3 Dronebuster counter-UAS detection and jamming systems. (Shephard Media)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded BAE Systems two contracts worth $5.4 million to develop a payload architecture that will enable smaller drones to multitask, a program known as CONCERTO. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Oregon State University a $6.5 million grant to improve the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence in robots and drones. (Press Release)

Boeing is partnering with Huntington Ingalls, the largest military shipbuilder in the U.S., to help to develop the company’s Echo Voyager extra large unmanned undersea vehicle (XLUUV). (Defense One)

ECA Group was awarded a contract by an undisclosed NATO navy for its A9-M autonomous underwater vehicles for mine countermeasure operations. (Naval Technology)

Dronefence, a German counter-UAS startup, announced seed funding from Larnabel Ventures, VP Capital, Boundary Holding, and Technology and Business Consulting Group. (Press Release)

Maritime Robotics, a Norwegian company specializing in unmanned maritime vehicles, will provide Seabed Geosolutions with its Mariner unmanned surface vehicle for seismic exploration. (Maritime Journal)

The Duke Energy Foundation awarded Butler Technology and Career Development School in Hamilton, Ohio a $45,000 grant to teach students how to use drones. (WLWT5)

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe awarded three $50,000 grants to the Counter-Drone Research Corporation, TruWeather Solutions, and dbS Productions to conduct research into drones and autonomous vehicles. (StateScoop)  

Nongtian Guanjia, a Chinese agricultural drone startup, raised $7 million in a funding round led by Gobi Partners. (Deal Street Asia)  

Autonomous vehicle and artificial intelligence company Cognata raised $5 million from Emerge, Maniv Mobility, and Airbus Ventures. (TechCrunch)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

The Jungle Hawk Owl team. Photo: Sally Chapman/MIT

In the event of a natural disaster that disrupts phone and Internet systems over a wide area, autonomous aircraft could potentially hover over affected regions, carrying communications payloads that provide temporary telecommunications coverage to those in need.

However, such unpiloted aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are often expensive to operate, and can only remain in the air for a day or two, as is the case with most autonomous surveillance aircraft operated by the U.S. Air Force. Providing adequate and persistent coverage would require a relay of multiple aircraft, landing and refueling around the clock, with operational costs of thousands of dollars per hour, per vehicle.

Now a team of MIT engineers has come up with a much less expensive UAV design that can hover for longer durations to provide wide-ranging communications support. The researchers designed, built, and tested a UAV resembling a thin glider with a 24-foot wingspan. The vehicle can carry 10 to 20 pounds of communications equipment while flying at an altitude of 15,000 feet. Weighing in at just under 150 pounds, the vehicle is powered by a 5-horsepower gasoline engine and can keep itself aloft for more than five days — longer than any gasoline-powered autonomous aircraft has remained in flight, the researchers say.

The team is presenting its results this week at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Conference in Denver, Colorado. The team was led by R. John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and Warren Hoburg, the Boeing Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Hansman and Hoburg are co-instructors for MIT’s Beaver Works project, a student research collaboration between MIT and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

A solar no-go

Hansman and Hoburg worked with MIT students to design a long-duration UAV as part of a Beaver Works capstone project — typically a two- or three-semester course that allows MIT students to design a vehicle that meets certain mission specifications, and to build and test their design.

In the spring of 2016, the U.S. Air Force approached the Beaver Works collaboration with an idea for designing a long-duration UAV powered by solar energy. The thought at the time was that an aircraft, fueled by the sun, could potentially remain in flight indefinitely. Others, including Google, have experimented with this concept,  designing solar-powered, high-altitude aircraft to deliver continuous internet access to rural and remote parts of Africa.

But when the team looked into the idea and analyzed the problem from multiple engineering angles, they found that solar power — at least for long-duration emergency response — was not the way to go.

“[A solar vehicle] would work fine in the summer season, but in winter, particularly if you’re far from the equator, nights are longer, and there’s not as much sunlight  during the day. So you have to carry more batteries, which adds weight and makes the plane bigger,” Hansman says. “For the mission of disaster relief, this could only respond to disasters that occur in summer, at low latitude. That just doesn’t work.”

The researchers came to their conclusions after modeling the problem using GPkit, a software tool developed by Hoburg that allows engineers to determine the optimal design decisions or dimensions for a vehicle, given certain constraints or mission requirements.

This method is not unique among initial aircraft design tools, but unlike these tools, which take into account only several main constraints, Hoburg’s method allowed the team to consider around 200 constraints and physical models simultaneously, and to fit them all together to create an optimal aircraft design.

“This gives you all the information you need to draw up the airplane,” Hansman says. “It also says that for every one of these hundreds of parameters, if you changed one of them, how much would that influence the plane’s performance? If you change the engine a bit, it will make a big difference. And if you change wingspan, will it show an effect?”

Framing for takeoff

After determining, through their software estimations, that a solar-powered UAV would not be feasible, at least for long-duration use in any part of the world, the team performed the same modeling for a gasoline-powered aircraft. They came up with a design that was predicted to stay in flight for more than five days, at altitudes of 15,000 feet, in up to 94th-percentile winds, at any latitude.

In the fall of 2016, the team built a prototype UAV, following the dimensions determined by students using Hoburg’s software tool. To keep the vehicle lightweight, they used materials such as carbon fiber for its wings and fuselage, and Kevlar for the tail and nosecone, which houses the payload. The researchers designed the UAV to be easily taken apart and stored in a FedEx box, to be shipped to any disaster region and quickly reassembled.

This spring, the students refined the prototype and developed a launch system, fashioning a simple metal frame to fit on a typical car roof rack. The UAV sits atop the frame as a driver accelerates the launch vehicle (a car or truck) up to rotation speed — the UAV’s optimal takeoff speed. At that point, the remote pilot would angle the UAV toward the sky, automatically releasing a fastener and allowing the UAV to lift off.

In early May, the team put the UAV to the test, conducting flight tests at Plum Island Airport in Newburyport, Massachusetts. For initial flight testing, the students modified the vehicle to comply with FAA regulations for small unpiloted aircraft, which allow drones flying at low altitude and weighing less than 55 pounds. To reduce the UAV’s weight from 150 to under 55 pounds, the researchers simply loaded it with a smaller ballast payload and less gasoline.

In their initial tests, the UAV successfully took off, flew around, and landed safely. Hoburg says there are special considerations that have to be made to test the vehicle over multiple days, such as having enough people to monitor the aircraft over a long period of time.

“There are a few aspects to flying for five straight days,” Hoburg says. “But we’re pretty confident that we have the right fuel burn rate and right engine that we could fly it for five days.”

“These vehicles could be used not only for disaster relief but also other missions, such as environmental monitoring. You might want to keep watch on wildfires or the outflow of a river,” Hansman adds. “I think it’s pretty clear that someone within a few years will manufacture a vehicle that will be a knockoff of this.”

This research was supported, in part, by MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Autonomous exploration and reliable mapping of unknown environments corresponds to a major challenge for mobile robotic systems. For many important application domains, such as industrial inspection or search and rescue, this task is further challenged from the fact that such operations often have to take place in GPS-denied environments and possibly visually-degraded conditions.

Source: Dr Kostas Alexis, UNR

In this work, we move away from deterministic approaches on autonomous exploration and we propose a localization uncertainty-aware autonomous receding horizon exploration and mapping planner verified using aerial robots. This planner follows a two-step optimization paradigm. At first, in an online computed random tree the algorithm finds a finite-horizon branch that optimizes the amount of space expected to be explored. The first viewpoint configuration of this branch is selected, but the path towards it is decided through a second planning step. Within that, a new tree is sampled, admissible branches arriving at the reference viewpoint are found and the robot belief about its state and the tracked landmarks of the environment is propagated. The branch that minimizes the expected localization uncertainty is selected, the corresponding path is executed by the robot and the whole process is iteratively repeated.

The algorithm has been experimentally verified with aerial robotic platforms equipped with a stereo visual-inertial system operating in both well-lit and dark conditions, as shown in our videos:

To enable further developments, research collaboration and consistent comparison, we have released an open source version of our localization uncertainty-aware exploration and mapping planner, experimental datasets and interfaces. To get the code, please visit: https://github.com/unr-arl/rhem_planner

This research was conducted at the Autonomous Robots Lab of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Reference:

• Autonomous exploration planning using aerial robots

A German Heron 1 UAV. Credit: Airbus Defence and Space

May 29, 2017 – June 4, 2017

News

A German court has thrown out a protest filed by U.S. drone maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems over the German military’s decision to acquire the Israel Aerospace Industries Heron TP drone over the U.S. firm’s Reaper. The decision by the Oberlandesgericht, the country’s high court, allows the Bundeswehr to proceed with the planned acquisition of five Heron TPs, a medium-altitude long-endurance surveillance and reconnaissance drone. (DefenseNews)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At War on the Rocks, Jonathan Gillis argues that the U.S. military is not prepared for a future filled with enemy drones.

Also at War on the Rocks, Michael Horowitz considers the ways in which emerging technologies will shape how the U.S. military fights in future conflicts.

In a series of articles at Breaking Defense, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. looks at how the U.S. military is integrating artificial intelligence into its operations.  

At Defense One, Patrick Tucker writes that Poland is planning to invest in small, lethal drones rather than large unmanned systems like the Reaper.

A study by the University of Washington found delivery drones tend to produce fewer carbon emissions than trucks when traveling short distances. (UW Today)

At TechCrunch, Brian Heater argues that the DJI Spark foldable drone is not quite the “mainstream” drone that it was made out to be.

At Popular Mechanics, Joe Pappalardo considers the role that small, disposable drones will play in the future of warfare.

At ArsTechnica, Sean Gallagher recalls his role in the U.S. Navy’s early experiments with unmanned aircraft.

At the Montreal Gazette, Marc Garneau discusses the potential threat posed by drones to aircraft.

At the Washington Post, Michael Laris considers what is likely to happen in the wake of the federal appeals court’s decision to strike down the FAA’s drone registration rule for hobbyists.

At the Jamestown Foundation, Tobias J. Burgers and Scott N. Romaniuk look at how al-Qaeda learned to adapt to U.S. drone strikes.

The New York Times reports that a former head of the CIA’s drone program will now lead the agency’s Iran operations.

A paper in Remote Sensing offers a survey of the different systems and methods for using drones for marine mammal research. (MDPI)

A paper in Frontiers in Plant Science compares the use of drones and satellite images in monitoring plant invasions.
In Critical Studies in Security, Katharine Hall Kindervater argues that targeted killings are best understood within the context of a shift towards lethal surveillance.

In the Air & Space Power Journal, Lt. Col. Thomas S. Palmer and Dr. John P. Geis II argue that effective counter-drone weapons will be essential in future conflicts.

In the Naval War College Review, Jeffrey E. Kline considers how to effectively integrate robotics into the fleet while recognizing fiscal constraints.

Know Your Drone

Researchers at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and Howard Hughes Medical Institute have created a system that turns live dragonflies into steerable drones. (Gizmodo)

A team at the University of Sherbrooke has developed a solar-powered drone than can autonomously land on lakes to recharge its batteries. (IEEE Spectrum)

U.S. firm Drone Aviation Holding Corp. unveiled an automated winch tethering system for DJI Inspire commercial multirotor drones. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Amazon has been awarded a patent for a shipping label that doubles as a parachute for items delivered by drone. (GeekWire)

Meanwhile, Walmart has been awarded a patent for a system that uses blockchain technology to keep track of delivery drones. (CoinDesk)

The Office of Naval Research is developing a drone that can detect buried mines for use in amphibious landings. (Shephard Media)

Apple announced that its education programming App, Swift Playgrounds, will soon support code-writing for robots and drones. (The Verge)  

Belorussian firms presented a range of new military unmanned aircraft at the MILEX 2017 exhibition in Minsk, including the Belar YS-EX, a medium-altitude long-endurance system. (IHS Jane’s 360)

In a test flight, China’s Caihong solar-powered ultra long-endurance drone reached an altitude of 65,000 feet. (The Sun)

Defense firm Lockheed Martin successfully completed a beyond line of sight pipeline inspection operation with its Indago 2 commercial multirotor drone. (Unmanned Aerial Online)

Robot maker SMP Robotics unveiled the S5 Security Robot, an unmanned ground vehicle. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

In a test, the U.S. Army used two Raytheon Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to intercept two drones. (Press Release)

The U.S. Special Operations Command has completed testing for its Joint Threat Warning System sensor for the Puma hand-launched tactical drone. (Shephard Media)

Aerospace firm Russian Helicopters is developing a fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing drone. (Shephard Media)

The U.S. Army is planning to test its autonomous trucks on a public highway in Michigan later this month. (Voice of America)

Texas Instruments has designed two circuit-based subsystems that it claims could increase the efficiency of battery-powered drones. (Drone Life)

Drones at Work

In a proof of concept demonstration, Drone Dispatch delivered a box of donuts to a customer by drone in Colorado. (CNET)

The organizers of the Torbay Airshow in the U.K. banned the use of drones at the event. (Devon Live)

Police in Snellville, Georgia are investigating various reports of a drone being used to spy on residents in their homes. (WSBTV)

Officers from the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia used a drone to find an armed suspect. (WTOP)

The Albany County Sheriff’s Office in New York has acquired a drone for a range of operations. (Albany Times Union)

North Dakota’s governor has established a task force to support the development of counter-drone technologies. (Press Release)

The Israel Defense Forces is equipping infantry, border defense, and combat intelligence corps units with DJI drones. (Times of Israel)

A Russian bank plans to begin using drones to deliver cash to customers. (Forbes)

Industry Intel

Speaking at the Code Conference, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said that Intel will not develop a consumer drone. (Recode)

Snap, the social media company that owns Snapchat, has acquired Ctrl Me Robotics, a California-based drone startup. (Buzzfeed)

The Australian Ministry of Defense announced that it will invest $75 million in small unmanned aircraft systems, including the AeroVironment Wasp AE, for the Australian Army. (Press Release)

The Netherlands Ministry of Defence selected the Insitu Integrator to replace the Insitu ScanEagle. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

The U.S. Army awarded Six3 Advanced Systems a $10.5 million contract to design and develop a prototype for a squad of human and unmanned assets. (DoD)

Three German firms, ESG Elektroniksystem und Logistik, Diehl Defence and Rohde & Schwarz, have partnered to market the Guardion counter-drone solution. (Shephard Media)

2G Robotics will provide the laser scanning, imaging, and illumination systems for the Norwegian Navy’s Kongsberg Maritime Hugin autonomous underwater vehicles. (Shephard Media)

France’s Direction Générale de l’Armement will take delivery of the Thales Spy’Ranger mini drone beginning in late 2018. (IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

Engineers at MIT have come up with an algorithm to tune a Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) camera, simplifying a scene to its most essential visual elements and potentially enabling the development of faster drones. Image: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT

There’s a limit to how fast autonomous vehicles can fly while safely avoiding obstacles. That’s because the cameras used on today’s drones can only process images so fast, frame by individual frame. Beyond roughly 30 miles per hour, a drone is likely to crash simply because its cameras can’t keep up.

Recently, researchers in Zurich invented a new type of camera, known as the Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS), that continuously visualizes a scene in terms of changes in brightness, at extremely short, microsecond intervals. But this deluge of data can overwhelm a system, making it difficult for a drone to distinguish an oncoming obstacle through the noise.

Now engineers at MIT have come up with an algorithm to tune a DVS camera to detect only specific changes in brightness that matter for a particular system, vastly simplifying a scene to its most essential visual elements.

The results, which they presented at the IEEE American Control Conference in Seattle, can be applied to any linear system that directs a robot to move from point A to point B as a response to high-speed visual data. Eventually, the results could also help to increase the speeds for more complex systems such as drones and other autonomous robots.

“There is a new family of vision sensors that has the capacity to bring high-speed autonomous flight to reality, but researchers have not developed algorithms that are suitable to process the output data,” says lead author Prince Singh, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “We present a first approach for making sense of the DVS’ ambiguous data, by reformulating the inherently noisy system into an amenable form.”

Singh’s co-authors are MIT visiting professor Emilio Frazzoli of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and Sze Zheng Yong of Arizona State University.

Taking a visual cue from biology

The DVS camera is the first commercially available “neuromorphic” sensor — a class of sensors that is modeled after the vision systems in animals and humans. In the very early stages of processing a scene, photosensitive cells in the human retina, for example, are activated in response to changes in luminosity, in real time.

Neuromorphic sensors are designed with multiple circuits arranged in parallel, similarly to photosensitive cells, that activate and produce blue or red pixels on a computer screen in response to either a drop or spike in brightness.

Instead of a typical video feed, a drone with a DVS camera would “see” a grainy depiction of pixels that switch between two colors, depending on whether that point in space has brightened or darkened at any given moment. The sensor requires no image processing and is designed to enable, among other applications, high-speed autonomous flight.

Researchers have used DVS cameras to enable simple linear systems to see and react to high-speed events, and they have designed controllers, or algorithms, to quickly translate DVS data and carry out appropriate responses. For example, engineers have designed controllers that interpret pixel changes in order to control the movements of a robotic goalie to block an incoming soccer ball, as well as to direct a motorized platform to keep a pencil standing upright.

But for any given DVS system, researchers have had to start from scratch in designing a controller to translate DVS data in a meaningful way for that particular system.

“The pencil and goalie examples are very geometrically constrained, meaning if you give me those specific scenarios, I can design a controller,” Singh says. “But the question becomes, what if I want to do something more complicated?”

Cutting through the noise

In the team’s new paper, the researchers report developing a sort of universal controller that can translate DVS data in a meaningful way for any simple linear, robotic system. The key to the controller is that it identifies the ideal value for a parameter Singh calls “H,” or the event-threshold value, signifying the minimum change in brightness that the system can detect.

Setting the H value for a particular system can essentially determine that system’s visual sensitivity: A system with a low H value would be programmed to take in and interpret changes in luminosity that range from very small to relatively large, while a high H value would exclude small changes, and only “see” and react to large variations in brightness.

The researchers formulated an algorithm first by taking into account the possibility that a change in brightness would occur for every “event,” or pixel activated in a particular system. They also estimated the probability for “spurious events,” such as a pixel randomly misfiring, creating false noise in the data.

Once they derived a formula with these variables in mind, they were able to work it into a well-known algorithm known as an H-infinity robust controller, to determine the H value for that system.

The team’s algorithm can now be used to set a DVS camera’s sensitivity to detect the most essential changes in brightness for any given linear system, while excluding extraneous signals. The researchers performed a numerical simulation to test the algorithm, identifying an H value for a theoretical linear system, which they found was able to remain stable and carry out its function without being disrupted by extraneous pixel events.

“We found that this H threshold serves as a ‘sweet-spot,’ so that a system doesn’t become overwhelmed with too many events,” Singh says. He adds that the new results “unify control of many systems,” and represent a first step toward faster, more stable autonomous flying robots, such as the Robobee, developed by researchers at Harvard University.

“We want to break that speed limit of 20 to 30 miles per hour, and go faster without colliding,” Singh says. “The next step may be to combine DVS with a regular camera, which can tell you, based on the DVS rendering, that an object is a couch versus a car, in real time.”

This research was supported in part by the Singapore National Research Foundation through the SMART Future Urban Mobility project.

The DJI Spark drone. Image via dronetrest.com

May 22, 2017 – May 28, 2017

News

A U.S. drone strike reportedly killed three members of the Pakistani Taliban. According to the Associated Press, the strike targeted a compound in Khost province, Afghanistan, although other sources indicate that the strike was in Pakistan.

The Trump administration is reportedly seeking new powers from Congress to track and destroy wayward drones inside the United States. A draft of the proposed law obtained by the New York Times would allow the federal government to intercept any drone that is viewed as a threat or is flying over a specially designated area such as military bases. According to the Times, the draft bill is currently being discussed in classified briefings on Capitol Hill.

A judge in North Dakota has acquitted a drone operator arrested at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests last year. Aaron Shawn Turgeon was charged with reckless endangerment after police claimed that he had flown close to a surveillance airplane. Footage from cell phones and from Turgeon’s drone contributed to his acquittal. (Bismarck Tribune)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on disruptive technologies and companies.

At Bellingcat, Nick Waters considers trends in ISIS drone bombing tactics based on a database of 121 strikes.

At the Los Angeles Times, Nabih Bulos examines the role that ISIS drones are playing on the battlefield in Mosul.

The editorial board at the Los Angeles Times argues that drones should not be considered the same as toys, even in the wake of the court ruling that struck down the FAA drone registration database.

At East Pendulum, Henri Kenhmann takes a closer look at the Chinese Air Force’s Wing Loong strike drone squadron.

At the Wall Street Journal, Paul J. Davies writes that profits are eluding drone manufacturers in spite of the popularity of consumer drones.

At CNET, Rick Broida surveys the cheap, $20 quadrotor drones that are currently available on the market.

Meanwhile, at Time, John Patrick Pullen looks for the perfect selfie drone.

At the Verge, Sean O’Kane writes that a new DJI policy will remove functionality from their drones unless the user registers with the company.

At Drone360, David O’Connor argues that online retailers are embracing delivery drones out of a desire to exploit consumer tendencies for instant gratification.
At TechCrunch, Brian Heater argues that in spite of new technologies and systems, consumer drones are not quite “mainstream” yet.

At the Taiwan News, Judy Lin writes that Taiwan’s push to develop a medium-altitude long-endurance surveillance drone is still in its early stages.

At the Augusta Chronicle, Thomas Gardiner writes that a Department of Energy investigation into drone sightings near nuclear sites in Georgia has not confirmed any of the reported sightings.

At the Financial Times, Jennifer Thompson looks at the impact that drones have had on workers in different industries.

At the Australian Financial Review, Andrew Burke examines the role that drones had in making the new Pirates of the Caribbean and considers how drones are changing filmmaking.

Know Your Drone

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Boeing are teaming up to build a reusable unmanned space plane called Phantom Express. (Popular Mechanics)

At a launch in New York City, commercial drone maker DJI unveiled Spark, a small consumer quadcopter that can be controlled with hand gestures. (TechCrunch)

In a test flight, a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems SkyGuardian drone remained airborne for 48 hours, a new record for a Predator-series aircraft. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Swedish auto maker Volvo is testing an autonomous garbage truck. (AUVSI)

Swiss drone maker Aeroscout unveiled the Scout B-330, a 50 kg rotary drone that can fly for up to three hours. (GPS World)

Defense firm Textron announced that it has successfully test fired its Fury lightweight precision guided missile from a Shadow tactical drone. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Israeli defense company UVision has developed a new extended-range loitering munition called the Hero-400EC with an endurance of two hours. (FlightGlobal)

Atmos UAV has unveiled the Marlyn, a vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing drone for commercial applications. (GIM International)

Belarus’s Indela Design Bureau has developed a military vertical take-off and landing drone called Bur. (IHS Jane’s 360)

In a test sponsored by the U.S. Navy, Lockheed Martin launched a Vector Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle from a Marlin MK2 undersea drone. (Popular Mechanics)

Drone maker SwellPro unveiled the Splash Drone 3, a waterproof multirotor drone that can float on water. (The Verge)

Otsaw, a Singapore-based startup, has developed an autonomous security ground robot equipped with a multirotor drone. (Mashable)

The U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center is testing a biomimetic minehunting unmanned undersea vehicle. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The U.S. Navy has issued a Request for Information relating to a planned large unmanned surface vehicle program. (FBO)

The U.S. Office of Naval Research and Naval Surface Warfare Command have developed an undersea remotely operated vehicle to assist naval dive teams. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Drones at Work

Chinese retailer JD.com has been granted government approval to operate heavy-load delivery drones along certain fixed routes. (Vox)

A drone crashed into the stands at a San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game in San Diego. (Washington Post)

U.S. Senators Feinstein (D-CA), Lee (R-UT), Blumenthal (D-CT), and Cotton (R-AR) have introduced a bill that would grant local governments the authority to regulate drone use. (Press Release)

The European Space Agency conducted a test in which it used a drone to help explore a cave system in Sicily. (Press Release)

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority has released a mobile app that shows drone operators where they can and cannot fly. (ABC)

Meanwhile, farmers in Australia are using drones to help muster herds of Merino sheep. (ABC)

Somali police have acquired five aerial surveillance drones donated by a former U.S. special operations officer. (Reuters)

The Idaho State Police have acquired four drones for a range of operations. (Idaho State Journal)

A food blogger in New Zealand used a drone to pick up his fried chicken from a KFC for him. (Mashable)

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is using three unmanned aircraft to observe atmospheric changes that could lead to severe thunderstorms. (Press Release)

A number of drone companies have teamed up to provide 3D drone imagery following flooding in Colombia. (UAV Expert News)

An Israeli Skylark drone crashed during a flight over southern Lebanon. (The New York Times)

The non-profit Lindbergh Foundation is using AI developed by Neurala to analyze footage from anti-poaching drones. (Engadget)

Park police in New York State used a drone to help rescue a dog from Letchworth Gorge. (Press Release)

The North Dakota National Guard in Fargo is slated to receive two MQ-9 Reaper drones for training this summer. (MPR News)

North Dakota was host to a simulated disaster exercise in order to test the role that drones could play in disaster response. (KVRR)

The Israeli military announced that it will deploy unmanned ground vehicles to patrol its border with the Gaza Strip in the coming years. (The Algemeiner)

The Yuku Baja Muliku Rangers in Queensland, Australia are using drones to conduct environmental inspections. (Innovators Magazine)

Industry Intel

Echodyne, a startup developing radar systems for drones, raised $29 million in a funding round led by Bill Gates. (TechCrunch)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded the University of Washington a base $3.5 million contract for the Aerial Dragnet program. (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $49.4 million advance acquisition contract for components for the MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $13 million contract for one multi-function active sensor for the MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $65.5 million contract modification for logistic support and sustainment for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator (MQ-4) program. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Insitu a $1.8 million contract to train service members on the RQ-21A Blackjack drone. (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Raytheon a $14.7 million contract for the AN/AQS-20, a mine hunting sonar that is designed to be towed by unmanned undersea and surface vehicles, as well as by manned platforms. (DoD)   

The U.S. Air Force awarded Radio Hill Technologies a $2.8 million contract for counter-drone systems. (FBO)

The Research & Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador awarded Kraken Sonar Systems $553,609 in funding to support development of the ThunderFish autonomous underwater vehicle. (Press Release)

American Robotics, a company that develops drones for commercial farming applications, secured $1.1 million in a funding round led by Brain Robotics Capital. (Press Release)

DroneSAR, a Dublin-based startup that seeks to develop drone software for emergency response, will receive $55,880 in funding as part of the European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre. (Silicon Republic)

Ontario-based SkyX received $4 million in funding from Kuang-Chi Group to continue developing self-charging drones for long-range industrial inspection missions. (Unmanned Aerial Online)  

L3 Technologies has acquired Open Water Power, a Massachusetts-based company that develops high-density aluminium batteries for unmanned undersea vehicles. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Israeli drone manufacturer Aeronautics will make an initial public offering by mid-June. (IHS Jane’s 360)

BIKI, an autonomous commercial underwater drone equipped with a 4K camera, has reached its fundraising goal on Kickstarter. (News Ledge)

Alta Devices and PowerOasis announced a partnership to develop a solar/lithium-ion hybrid battery for drones. (Drone360)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

HARRIS

The Xponential 2017 national conference was held May 8-11 by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas. The event took place in the largest exhibit hall ever dedicated to unmanned systems and robotics, with over 370,000 square feet. It featured over 650 robotics organizations – companies, research institutions, universities, consultants, nonprofits and more – from the U.S. and countries worldwide.

Here’s a sample of images from the world’s largest tradeshow for unmanned systems. All images by Lucien Miller, CEO of innov8tivedesigns.com.

AERYON Labs

AIRBUS DEFENCE

FIRSTEC CO

Infrared Cameras Inc

PRODRONE

QinetiQ North America

Quasonix

Robotis

STAMPEDE

TEI

TELEDYNE TECHNOLOGIES

Tianjin Aurora UAV Technology

Click here to view the full gallery.

Drone company Atmos UAV has launched Marlyn, a lightweight drone which flies automatically, effortlessly and at high wind speeds. One of the first customers that signed up is Skeye, Europe’s leading unmanned aircraft data provider. This new technology allows industry professionals around the world to map the surface 10 times faster and guarantees no more drone crashes.

“With her unique properties, Marlyn allows us to tackle even our most challenging jobs,” says Pieter Franken, co-founder of Skeye, one of Europe’s leading unmanned aircraft data providers. He continues: “We expect time savings of up to 50% and moreover save a huge amount of our resources and equipment.” Marlyn can cover 1 km² in half an hour with a ground sampling distance of 3 cm.

“We are very excited to work together with Skeye and to have the opportunity to implement their operational expertise in this promising project,” Sander Hulsman, CEO of Atmos UAV adds. “Marlyn is all about making aerial data collection safer and more efficient, allowing professional users across all industries to access the skies, enabling them to focus more on analysing the actual information and improving their business effectiveness.”

Mapping made easy
With Marlyn, mapping jobs consist of four easy steps. First, a flight plan is generated based on the required accuracy and the specified project area. Secondly, the drone starts its flight and data collection by a simple push of a button. Thirdly, after Marlyn has landed at the designated spot, the captured data is automatically organised and processed by image processing software of choice. Finally, a detailed analysis can be done to provide actionable insights.

About Atmos UAV
Atmos UAV is a high-tech start-up that designs and manufactures reliable aerial observation and data gathering solutions for professional users. It all originated from a project at Delft University of Technology. With the support of its faculty of Aerospace Engineering, it grew into the fast-growing spin-off company Atmos UAV. The company specializes in land surveying, mining, precision agriculture, forestry and other mapping related applications. Atmos UAV is currently hiring to accommodate its rapid expansion.

Latvian drone manufacturer Aerones organized the world’s first drone skydive. Credit: Aerones/YouTube

News

A U.S. Court of Appeals has struck down the Federal Aviation Administration’s drone registration requirement for recreational operators. The federal court ruled that the registration system violates the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which does not grant the FAA the authority to regulate hobby aircraft. More than 820,000 people have registered their drones with the FAA since the requirement was implemented in 2015. (Recode)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At the Harvard Business Review, Chris Anderson examines the economic potential of drones to transform industries like construction.

At Wired, Rhett Allain studies the physics of a quadcopter in flight.

In a statement, Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) urges the Department of Defense to develop an air traffic management system for drones. (Press Release)

In a speech at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, General Raymond Thomas said that armed ISIS drones were the “most daunting problem” of the past year. (DefenseNews)

The U.S. Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development held a hearing on drones and self-driving cars.

At the Indianapolis Star, Ryan Martin writes that police departments in Indiana are pushing back against a state law that prohibits police from using drones for surveillance.

At War is Boring, David Axe looks at how the U.S. Air Force is using robotic F-16 fighters to test the teaming of manned and unmanned aircraft in combat.

At The Strategy Bridge, Brian M. Michelson considers the challenge of accountability in autonomous weapons.

At the Intercept, Shuaib Almosawa and Murtaza Hussain write that family members of individuals killed in a U.S. drone strike are disputing claims that the men were members of al-Qaeda.

At Vox, Timothy B. Lee writes that artificial intelligence is “getting more powerful, and it’s about to be everywhere.”

At Popular Science, Kelsey D. Atherton looks at how ISIS is developing remote-controlled weapons that appear similar to some of the earliest drones.

At Ars Technica, Megan Geuss visits a drone racing event to discover the appeal that draws would-be racers to the budding sport.

The Digital Forensic Research Lab look at how separatists in Ukraine use drones and text messages to spread propaganda.

Paint By Drone, a graffiti drone system, will create its first two installations in Berlin and Turin later this year. (Progrss)

Know Your Drone

Amazon announced that is has started development of an air traffic management system for its delivery drones. (Bloomberg)

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and ETH Zurich in Switzerland are developing systems that enable drones to maintain the exact framing of a scene specified by the operator. (Engadget)

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is working to develop solar-powered unmanned aircraft that can remain aloft for extended periods. (R&D Magazine)

Maritime firms Yara and Kongsberg are partnering to develop an autonomous electric cargo ship that produces zero emissions. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

An official at the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center has said that the service’s next tank will have the ability to operate aerial drones. (War is Boring)

In a test, a robotic co-pilot system developed by Aurora Flight Sciences successfully landed a simulated Boeing 737 commercial airliner. (Aviation Week)  

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing drone swarms in which the aircraft are protected by a virtual bumper area that prevents them from crashing into each other. (Engadget)

The Air Force Research Laboratory released a rendering of what appears to be its planned Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology drone. (The Drive)

Meanwhile, the Air Force Research Laboratory presented a number of unmanned aircraft projects at the second biennial Department of Defense Lab Day, including the Ninja counter-drone system and the Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology Program. (Press Release)

U.S. firm Endeavor Robotics unveiled a variant of its 710 Kobra ground robot armed with a 7.62mm machine gun. (Shephard Media)

The Unmanned Mine Counter Measure Integrated System, an unmanned undersea vessel built by Russian shipyard SNSZ, has been declared fully operational with the Kazakh Navy. (Press Release)

Singapore-based firm Zycraft announced that its Independent USV completed a test in which it was deployed in the South China Sea for a continuous period of 22 days. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory is developing small unmanned aircraft that can be launched from AC-130 gunships or similar manned aircraft. (IHS Jane’s 360)

During a trial operation off the coast of San Clemente Island, a U.S. Navy MQ-8B Fire Scout  drone helicopter served as a laser designation platform for a Hellfire missile fired from an MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter. (Press Release)

Drones at Work

Japanese fighter jets were scrambled in response to a drone operated by a Chinese vessel over disputed waters in the East China Sea. (Nikkei Asian Review)

A Jordanian Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down a drone that was flying near the Syrian border.  (IHS Jane’s 360)

Police in South Pasadena, California used a drone to aid in the search for a missing boy. (The Los Angeles Times)  

Officials in Elk City, Oklahoma enlisted students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to survey damage from a recent tornado with a drone. (News9)

Two aerial inspection services companies, AirShark and Unmanned Experts, used drones to inspect a crucial railroad bridge in New York State. (Unmanned Aerial Online)

The West Australia Police air wing is planning to test drones for a range of operations including investigations and search and rescue missions. (The West Australian)

Researchers using drones to study narwhals found that the animals appear to use use their long, sharp tusks to stun their prey. (New Atlas)

U.S. startup DroneSeed has obtained FAA approval to operate multiple drones carrying agricultural payloads. (Unmanned Aerial Online)

Police in Brick Township, New Jersey have purchased a drone for search and rescue and scene documentation. (App.com)

As part of an inauguration ceremony for an unmanned aircraft runway, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe flew in a remotely piloted airplane. (Press Release)

Researchers at the University of California are using drones to study tortoise habitats in the Mojave Desert. (IGIS)

The Les Nicolles prison in the the U.K. has installed a Sky Fence counter-drone system. (The Telegraph)

The Israeli Air Force is planning to replace its Sea Scan manned maritime patrol aircraft with the IAI Heron 1, a medium-altitude long-endurance drone. (UPI)  

Industry Intel

DroneWERX, a new initiative by the U.S. Special Operations Command and Strategic Capabilities Office, will focus on rapidly acquiring and fielding new drones and robots, swarms, and machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies for special operations. (DefenseNews)

The U.S. Special Operations Command has placed an urgent order for 325 AeroVironment Switchblade loitering munition drones. (Defense One) For more on loitering munitions, click here.

The U.S. Air Force awarded General Atomics Aeronautical Systems a $400 million contract for 36 MQ-9 Reaper aircraft. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $303.9 million contract modification for three Lot 2 MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft and associated equipment. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Leidos a $299,570 contract for the Open Ocean Counter Unmanned Underwater Vehicle. (FBO)

The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental awarded FlyMotion a $35,388 contract for DJI drones. (FBO)

Delphi will collaborate with BMW, Intel, and Mobileye to develop and field automated vehicles by 2021. (Associated Press)

Silverstone, the British racing circuit, has reportedly contracted Drone Defence to provide counter-drone systems for the Formula 1 race in July. (The Sun)

The University of Aarhus in Denmark awarded YellowScan a $114,316 contract for a UAS LiDAR solution for surveying. (Ted)

Saudi Arabia launched the Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a state-owned military industrial company that will manufacture drones, as well as a variety of other military systems and equipment. (Reuters)

Amazon will open a research center outside of Paris that will focus on developing its Prime Air drone delivery concept. (Venture Beat)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

We have developed a computationally efficient trajectory generator for six degrees-of-freedom multirotor vehicles, i.e. vehicles that can independently control their position and attitude. The trajectory generator is capable of generating approximately 500’000 trajectories per second that guide the multirotor vehicle from any initial state, i.e. position, velocity and attitude, to any desired final state in a given time. In this video, we show an example application that requires the evaluation of a large number of trajectories in real time.

Multirotor vehicle

The multirotor vehicle used in the demonstration is an omni-directional eight-rotor vehicle. Its unique actuator configuration gives it full force and torque authority in all three dimensions, allowing it to fly novel maneuvers. For more details, please refer to the Youtube video or the research paper: “Design, Modeling and Control of an Omni-Directional Aerial Vehicle”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016.

Researchers

Dario Brescianini and Raffaello D’Andrea
Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC), ETH Zurich, Switzerland – http://www.idsc.ethz.ch

Location

Flying Machine Arena, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by and builds upon prior contributions by numerous collaborators in the Flying Machine Arena project. See the list here. This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 5 (EODMU5) Platoon 142 recover an unmanned underwater vehicle onto a Coastal Riverine Group 1 Detachment Guam MK VI patrol boat in the Pacific Ocean May 10, 2017. Credit: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Torrey W. Lee/ U.S. Navy

May 8, 2017 – May 14, 2017

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News

The International Civil Aviation Organization announced that it plans to develop global standards for small unmanned aircraft traffic management. In a statement at the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s Xponential trade conference, the United Nations agency said that as part of the initiative it has issued a Request for Information on air traffic management systems for drones. (GPS World)

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has created a new office dedicated to drones and autonomous systems. According to Gov. McAuliffe, the Autonomous Systems Center for Excellence will serve as a “clearinghouse and coordination point” for research and development programs related to autonomous technologies. (StateScoop)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At the Telegraph, Alan Tovey writes that the U.K.’s exit from the European Union is unlikely to affect cross-channel cooperation on developing fighter drones.

At the Dead Prussian Podcast, Ulrike Franke discusses the role that drones currently play in the military.

At IHS Jane’s 360, Daniel Wasserbly writes that the U.S. Marine Corps will slow its acquisition of the Boeing Insitu Blackjack drone.

At the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, James Rogers argues that the Trump administration policy on drones is “likely to prove counterproductive.”

At IEEE Spectrum, David Schneider examines state and local drone regulations.

In the Journal of Archaeological Science, Sean Field, Matt Waite, and LuAnn Wandsnider consider the utility of drones for archeological surveys.

At RJI Online, Jennifer Nelson looks at what a television station in Idaho is learning about using drones for news coverage.

A report by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights considers the “impact of drone attacks on law, warfare and society.”

At The New York Times, William Grimes visits “Drones: Is the Sky the Limit?,” a new exhibition at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

In a paper in the International Organization journal, Matthew Fuhrmann and Michael C. Horowitz consider the reasons that states acquire drones.

At Bloomberg, Justin Bachman looks at how different companies are seeking an advantage in managing data from drones for commercial purposes.

At the Associated Press, Dario Lopez and Joshua Goodman write about a U.S. Coast Guard program using drones to counter maritime smuggling.

In a speech at the Xponential 2017 trade show, Intel Corporation CEO Brian Krzanich argued that data will be the most significant aspect of the drone industry. (AUVSI)

At the South China Morning Post, Li Tao writes that China’s popular consumer drone brands are increasingly turning to the commercial sector.

At Defense One, Marcus Weisgerber writes that the Pentagon is using machine-learning to help identify ISIS targets.

Know Your Drone

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology unveiled the Saqr 1, an armed drone with a range of up to 2,500 km. (IHS Jane’s 360)  

U.S. drone maker AeroVironment unveiled the Snipe, a nano quadcopter that weighs just 150 grams. (New Atlas)

In a test, startup Volans-i flew a delivery drone along a 100-mile route in Texas, a new record for a drone delivery. (Tech Crunch)

Energy firm twingtec is developing a tethered drone that harvests power from the wind. (Design Boom)

The U.S. Army is seeking a midsize cargo drone that could operate with a high level of autonomy. (FlightGlobal)

Nautilus, a California startup, is developing a cargo drone that could carry thousands of pounds of goods over long distances. (Air & Space Magazine)

Drone maker Pulse Aerospace unveiled two new rotorcraft drones for military and commercial applications, the Radius 65 and the Vapor 15. (Press Release)

Piaseki Aerospace will likely submit its ARES demonstrator drone for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Unmanned Expeditionary Capabilities program. (FlightGlobal)

Turkish defense firm Aselsan has unveiled two new counter-drone systems. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Defense firm Kratos confirmed that it has conducted several demonstration flights of a high performance jet drone for an undisclosed customer. (FlightGlobal)

Technology firm Southwest Research Institute has been granted a patent for a system by which military drones can collaborate with unmanned ground vehicles. (Unmanned Aerial Online)

The U.S. Army is interested in developing a mid-size unmanned cargo vehicle that could carry up to 800 pounds of payload. (FlightGlobal)

A student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design has created a drone designed to help parents track their children. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

French drone maker Parrot is set to begin developing a line of prosumer drones. (Recode)

Defense firm Qinetiq has announced that it will pursue the U.S. Army’s Lightweight Reconnaissance Robot program. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The U.S. Army is seeking a replacement engine for the RQ-7 Shadow tactical drone. (FlightGlobal) 

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have been crashing autonomous drones repeatedly in order to teach them how to avoid crashing. (IEEE)

An Air Force investigation found that the cause of the crash of an MQ-9 Reaper drone in Nevada last summer was pilot error. (Press Release)

A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency press release describes in detail its recent military academy swarming competition.

Raytheon announced that it has installed ground-based sense-and-avoid systems at a number of air bases in the U.S. (IHS Jane’s 360)

The Digital Circuit has put together a compilation of images of some of the more interesting drones at this year’s Xponential drone conference.

Drones at Work

A drone flying over a bike race in in Rancho Cordova, California crashed into a cyclist. (Market Watch)

Meanwhile, a consumer drone crashed into a car crossing the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia. It is the second time a drone has crashed at the site of the bridge in the past nine months. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Insurance company Travelers has trained over 150 drone operators to use drones for insurance appraisals over properties. (Insurance Journal)

Kazakhstan’s armed forces displayed a number of its recently acquired unmanned aircraft during a military parade. (IHS Jane’s 360)

A Latvian technology firm used a large multirotor drone to carry a skydiver to altitude before he parachuted back down to earth. (Phys.org)

Clear Flight Solutions and AERIUM Analytics are set to begin integrating the Robird drone system, a falcon-like drone that scares birds away from air traffic, at Edmonton International Airport. (Unmanned Systems Technology)

Industry Intel

The U.S. Army awarded General Atomics Aeronautical Systems a $221.6 million contract modification for 20 extended range Gray Eagle drones and associated equipment. (DoD)

The U.S. Air Force awarded General Electric a $14 million contract for work that includes the Thermal Management System for unmanned aircraft. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Boeing Insitu a $8.1 million contract for spare parts for the RQ-21A Blackjack. (DoD)

The United Arab Emirates awarded Canada-based CAE a contract estimated at $40.9 million to train drone operators. (UPI)

Airbus opened a subsidiary in Atlanta that will sell imagery from satellites and drones to commercial clients. (AIN Online)

Turkish Aerospace Industries will begin cooperating with ANTONOV Company on the development of unmanned systems. (Press Release)

Aker, a company that develops drones for agriculture, won $950,000 in funding from the Clean Energy Trust Challenge. (Chicago Tribune)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

PhoneDrone Ethos, Kickstarter campaign. Credit: xCraft/YouTube

JD Claridge’s story epitomizes the current state of the drone industry. Claridge, founder of xCraft, is best known for being the first contestant on Shark Tank to receive money from all the Sharks – even Kevin O’Leary! Walking the floor of Xponential 2017, the annual convention of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems Integration (AUVSI), Claridge remarked to me how the drone industry has grown up since his TV appearance.

Claridge has gone from pitching cellphone cases that turn into drones (aka phonedrone) to solving mission critical problems. The age of fully autonomous flight is near and the drone industry is finally recovering from the hangover of overhyped Kickstarter videos (see Lily drone’s $34 million fraud). xCraft’s pivot to lightweight, power efficient, enterprise drones is an example of this evolved marketplace. During the three days of Xponential 2017, several far-reaching announcements were made between stalwarts of the tech industry and aviation startups. Claridge introduced me to his new partner, Rajant, which is a leader in industrial wireless networks. xCraft’s latest models utilize Rajant’s mesh networks to launch swarms of drones with one controller. More drones flying simultaneously enables users to maximize the flight time limitations of lithium batteries by covering greater areas within a single mission.

Bob Schena, Rajant’s CEO, said, “Rajant’s network technology now makes it possible for one pilot to operate many aircrafts concurrently, with flight times of 45 minutes. We’re pleased to partner with xCraft and bring more intelligence, mobility and autonomy to UAV communication infrastructures covering greater aerial distances while supporting various drone payloads.”

The battery has been the Achilles heel of the small drone industry since inception. While large winged craft relies heavily on fossil fuels, multirotor battery-operated drones have been plagued with shorter missions of under 45 minutes. Innovators like Claridge are leading the way for a new wave of creative solutions:

Solar Powered Wings 

Solar Powered Wings

Airbus showcased its Zephyr drone products or HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite) UAVs using solar-winged craft for power. Zephyr UAVs can fly for months at a time, saving thousands of tons of fuel. The HAPS also offers a number of lightweight payload options from voice communications to persistent internet to real-time surveillance. Airbus was not the only solar solution on display; there were a handful of Chinese upstarts and solar cell purveyors for retrofitting existing aircrafts.

Hybrid Fuel Solutions  

In the Startup Pavilion, William Fredericks of the Advanced Aircraft Company (AAC) demoed a novel technology using a hybrid of diesel fuel and lithium batteries with flexible fixed wings and multirotors, resulting in over 3 hours of flying time. AAC’s prototype, the Hercules (above) is remarkably lightweight and fast. Fredricks is an aircraft designer by trade with 12 designs flying in the air, including NASA’s Greased Lightning that looks remarkably similar to Boeing’s Osprey. The Hercules is available for sale on the company’s website for multiple use cases, including: agricultural, first responders, and package delivery. It is interesting to note that a few rows from Frederick’s booth was his former employer, NASA, promoting their new Autonomy Incubator for “intelligent flight systems” and its “autonomy innovation lab,” (definitely an incubator to watch).

Vertical Take Off & Landing

In addition to hybrid fuel strategies, entrepreneurs are also rethinking the launch procedures. AAC’s Hercules and XCraft’s commercial line of drones vertically takeoff to reduce wind resistance and maximize energy consumption. Australian Startup Iridium Dynamics takes this approach to a new level with astonishing results. Its winged craft, Halo, uses a patent-pending “hover thrust” of its entire craft so its wings actually create the vertical lift to hover with minimal power. The drone also has two rotors to fly horizontally. According to Dion Gonano, Control Systems Engineer, it can fly for over 2 hours. The Halo also lands vertically into a stationary mechanical arm. While the website lists a number of commercial applications for this technology, it was unclear in my discussions with Gonano if they have deployed this technology in real tests.

New Charging Efficiencies

Prior to Xponential, Seattle-based WiBotic announced the closing of its $2.5 seed round to fund its next generation of battery charging technologies. The company has created a novel approach to wireless inductive charging for robotics. Its wireless inductive charging platform includes a patent-pending auto detect feature that can begin recharging once the robot enters the proximity of the base station, even during flight. According to Dr. Ben Waters, (CEO), its charge is faster than traditional solutions presently on the market. Dr. Waters demonstrated for me its suite of software tools that monitor battery performance, providing clients with a complete power management analytics platform. WiBotic is already piloting its technology with leading commercial customers in the energy and security sectors. WiBotic is the first inductive charging platform; other companies have created innovating battery-swapping techniques. Airobotics unique drone storage box that is deployed currently at power plants in Israel, includes a robotic arm, housed inside, that services the robot post flight by switching out the payload and battery:

Reducing Payload Weight

In addition to aircraft design, payload weight is a big factor of battery drain. A growing trend within the industry is miniaturizing the size and cost of the components. Ultimately, the mission of a drone is directly related to the type of payload from cameras for collecting images to precise measurements using Light Detection and Ranging sensors (or Lidar). Lidar is typically deployed in autonomous vehicles to provide the most precise position for the robot in a crowded area, like a self-driving car on the road. However, Lidar is currently extremely expensive and large for many multirotor surveys. Chris Brown of Z-Senz, a former scientist with the The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), hopes to change the landscape of drones with his miniaturized Lidar sensor. Brown’s reduced sensor, SKY1, offers major advantages for size, weight, and power consumption without losing accuracy of high distance sensing. A recent study estimates the Lidar market is expected to exceed $5 billion by 2022, with Velodyne and Quanergy already gaining significant investment. Z-Senz is aiming to be commercially available by 2018.

Lidar is not the only measuring methodology, Global Positioning Solutions (GPS) have been deployed widely. Two of the finalists of the Xponetial Startup Showdown were startups focused on reducing GPS chip sizes and increasing functionality. Inertial Sense has produced a chip the size of a dime that is capable of housing an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS), and GPS-aided Inertial Navigation System (INS). Their website claims that their “advanced algorithms fuse output from MEMs inertial sensors, magnetometers, barometric pressure, and a high-sensitivity GPS (GNSS) receiver to deliver fast, accurate, and reliable attitude, velocity, and position even in the most dynamic environments.” The chips and micro navigation accessories are available on the company’s e-store.

The winner of the Showdown, uAvionix, is a leading developer of avionics for both manned and unmanned flight. Their new transceivers and transponders claim to be “the smallest, and lightest and most affordable on the market” (already GPS is a commodity). uAvionix presented its “Ping Network System that reduces weight on average by 40% as compared to the two-piece installations.” The Ping products also claim barometric altitude precision with accuracy beyond 80,000 ft.

Paul Beard, CEO of uAvionix, said, “our customers have asked for even smaller and lighter solutions; integrating the transceivers, GPS receivers, GPS antennas, and barometric pressure sensors into a single form factor facilitates easier installation and lowers weight and power draw requirements resulting in a longer usable flight time.”

As I rushed to the airport to catch my manned flight, I felt reenergized about the drone industry, although follies will persist. I mean who wouldn’t want a pool deckchair drone this summer?

This and all other autonomous subjects will be explored at RobotLabNYC’s next event with Dr. Howard Morgan (FirstRound Capital) and Tom Ryden (MassRobotics) – RSVP.

Tech. Sgt. Mike, Master Sgt. Alex and Master Sgt. Mike stand next to a T-6A Texan II parked on the west flight line at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, May 4, 2017. They completed undergraduate remotely piloted aircraft training May 5th here and the T-6A is one of the planes they trained in. They are the first Air Force enlisted airmen to train as pilots since World War II. Image: US Air Force

May 1, 2017 – May 7, 2017

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News

The European Aviation Safety Association has proposed a set of regulations for small drones. The rules include geo-fencing requirements to protect restricted airspace, as well as the inclusion of educational pamphlets in retail packaging for consumer drones. The agency will submit a final draft to the European Commission by the end of the year following a public comment period. (Reuters)

Commentary, Analysis, and Art

At Scout Warrior, David Hambling looks at the different ways that small, low-cost drones will be used to shape the battlefields of the future.

At the Air Force Times, Stephen Losey profiles the Air Force’s first enlisted RQ-4 Global Hawk drone pilots.

At the National Interest, Samuel Bendett writes that Russia is pushing ahead with the development of unmanned ground vehicles.

At Motherboard, David Axe writes that live footage from U.S. military drones may have accidentally leaked onto the Internet.

At Recode, April Glaser and Kurt Wagner write that Facebook is turning to a tethered drone produced by a San Francisco-based startup to bring Internet to hard-to-reach areas.

The Digital Forensic Research Lab looks at the Russian-made Orlan-10 drones that have recently crashed in Ukraine.

At the Army Times, Todd South writes that U.S. defense officials are pushing to update DoD’s acquisition process in order to accommodate new technologies like drones.

At Wired, Sophia Chen profiles the ArcticShark, a drone originally designed for military service that is now being used to study climate change.

At AIN Online, Bill Carey writes that the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee is taking steps to implement a counter-drone strategy for U.S. airports and critical infrastructure.

At C4ISRNET, Valerie Insinna writes that the Department of Defense is expected to soon release a new unmanned systems roadmap, its first since 2013.

At Deadspin, Dan McQuade examines the case of a drone user who was charged with reckless endangerment for allegedly flying a drone near the NFL Draft event.

At the Spokesman-Review, William L. Spence writes that citizens in Pullman, Washington are voicing privacy concerns about the police department’s plan to acquire drones.

At the Los Angeles Times, Samantha Masunaga looks at how an air traffic system for drones might actually work in practice.

At Dezeen, Marcus Fairs profiles a Tokyo-based architecture firm preparing for a future in which drones radically alter city life.

At ADN, Alex DeMarban writes that transportation officials in Alaska may save money by using drones instead of airplanes to obtain aerial images of structures and terrain.

A photograph by Andrew Studer captures what appears to be a drone flying illegally over a lava spout in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. (PetaPixel)

Know Your Drone

The U.S. Air Force conducted its first ever strike using a GBU-38 GPS-guided bomb from an MQ-9 Reaper in Syria, just days after completing testing of the weapon aboard the drone. (Breaking Defense)

Rapid Composites unveiled the Bullray, an armed amphibious vertical take-off and landing drone. (Press Release)

IBM has filed a patent for a system that enables the transfer of packages between two flying drones. (New Atlas)

Turkey’s defense ministry has conducted test firings of domestically produced weapons mounted on a Turkish Aerospace Industries Anka drone. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Augmented reality technology startup Edgybees has unveiled an augmented reality game that allows drone pilots to fly along a virtual obstacle course. (Spatial Source)

The U.S. Navy is studying the possibility of using drones to keep track of sailors during man-overboard situations. (Naval Technology)

Colorado firm Black Swift Technologies is building two drones that will be used to study volcanoes. (KUSA)

Researchers at the University of Nevada have developed an unmanned ground vehicle for inspecting bridges. (New Scientist)

Drone maker UAV Solutions has test-flown a drone beyond visual line of sight using a 4G LTE network connection. (Shephard Media)  

Meanwhile, chipmaker Qualcomm has announced that an extensive study shows that drones can reliably be controlled using an LTE data connection. (Engadget)

China is reportedly developing a ground-effects drone-missile hybrid. (The Drive)

The AirSelfie, a selfie micro-drone funded through a Kickstarter campaign, is now available for pre-order. (Forbes)

U.S. firm Valmie Resources is set to unveil the Transition UAV, a long endurance fixed-wing drone. (Shephard Media)

Unmanned systems maker iRobot has added Alexa functionality to some of its Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaners, allowing the systems to be controlled with voice commands. (TechCrunch)

Drones at Work

Researchers from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife are experimenting with drones for counting herds of Elk. (KTVZ)

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office in South Dakota used a drone for aerial surveillance during a standoff with an armed suspect. (KSFY)

First responders in Spanish Fork, Utah used a drone to assist the search for a man who went missing last month. (KSL)

Nevada aerospace firm AviSight has been granted permission to fly drones over the Las Vegas Strip. (U.S. News)

An MQ-9 Reaper drone being operated from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico crashed during a flight. The Air Force has not released further details about the incident. (Holloman AFB)

A number of U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawks arrived at Yokota Air Base in Japan, where they will be deployed temporarily for a range of reconnaissance missions. (Yokota AFB)

Two men were arrested in South Carolina after allegedly attempting to smuggle contraband into a prison using drones. (Associated Press)

The Connecticut state legislature chose to not pursue a bill that would allow law enforcement to use weaponized drones. (CT News Junkie)

Police in Riverside County, California arrested a man accused of illegal dumping after he was spotted from above by a local drone pilot. (NBC Los Angeles)

The Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office has acquired a drone that was donated by a California software company. (Port Clinton News Herald)

The San Francisco city government is developing policies that would enable city agencies to use drones. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Animal rights group Showing Animals Respect and Kindness has been using drones to document activities at feedlots and a livestock research facility in Nebraska. (Cattle Network)

Industry Intel

Fortem Technologies, a Utah-based company developing a counter-drone radar, raised $5.5 million in a funding round led by Signia Venture Partners and Data Collective. (TechCrunch)

DARPA awarded Lockheed Martin a $4.5 million contract for Aerial Dragnet, a program examining the use of drones for persistent, wide-area surveillance of drones over urban areas. (FBO)

The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $32.6 million contract modification for radar and software upgrades to the MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter. (DoD)

The U.S. Navy awarded Aquabotix a $125,000 contract for unmanned undersea vehicles. (Defence Connect)

The U.S. Navy awarded a contract for software for the Forward Deployed Energy and Communications Outpost unmanned undersea vehicle. (FBO)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $40 million contract for the Battle Field Airborne Communications Node for the EQ-4B Global Hawk. (DoD)

The U.S. Air Force awarded Robonic, a Finnish company and subsidiary of Safran Electronics and Defense, a contract for two Kontio pneumatic launchers for drones. (UPI)

The U.S. Army awarded Black-I-Robotics a $150,000 contract for an unmanned ground vehicle with a robotic arm. (FBO)

The U.S. Army awarded Source 4 Industries a $6,952.50 contract for pneumatic caster wheels for the MQ-1C Gray Eagle transport cases. (FBO)

Israel’s Meteor Aerospace was awarded its first contract for the Impact 700 drone by an unidentified customer. (FlightGlobal)

General Atomics Aeronautical selected GKN Aerospace Fuel Systems to supply the fuel bladder system for the MQ-9B Reaper. (Press Release)

Statistics MRC predicts that the global market for drones will reach $22.15 billion by 2022. (DefenseNews)

Applied Research Associates acquired Neya Systems, a Pennsylvania-based unmanned systems company. (IHS Jane’s 360)

Arth-Wind, a Brazilian wind energy company, contracted Portugal-based Pro-Drone to provide wind turbine inspections services. (Renewable Energy World)

Amazon announced that it will expand research and development operations in the U.K. by moving to a new, larger facility. (TechCrunch)