Heat-Resistant Drone Could Scope, Map Burning Buildings, Wildfires

 Heat-Resistant Drone Could Scope, Map Burning Buildings, Wildfires

Imperial College London (U.K.)

Hayley Dunning, June 26, 2023

Scientists at the U.K.'s Imperial College London (ICL) and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology designed a heat-resistant drone that could inspect and define the scope of fires in buildings and woodland. The FireDrone incorporates thermal aerogel insulation material and a cooling system based on the release and evaporation of gas from carbon dioxide sensors so it can tolerate temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit) for up to 10 minutes. Explained ICL's Mirko Kovac, "FireDrone could be sent in ahead to gather crucial information—noting trapped people, building layouts, unexpected hazards—so that responders can prepare accordingly to keep themselves safe and potentially save more lives."  ... '

Drone LiDAR

Driving Drone LiDAR

SMALLER, SAFER, AND EASY TO USE: EASYONE DRONE LIDAR

May 9, 2023 Leave a comment

Smaller, Safer, and Easy To Use: EasyOne Drone LiDAR

Company that Launched The World’s First Quadcopter Drone Announces The New Standard For Drone LiDAR,        May 9, 2023

Denver, CO- From the floor of Xponential, drone surveying pioneer Microdrones announced an entirely new drone platform built around the demands of geospatial professionals. Vivien Heriard-Dubreuil, CEO of Microdrones explains “We’re excited to announce this new drone platform that prioritizes three key areas: transportability, a simple control interface and ease of use.” 

EasyOne Drone LiDAR

Xponential participants crowded the Microdrones booth for a closer look. “This is EasyOne,” said Frank Darmayan, company CTO, as he pointed to the display. “It fits in a case that’s about two and a half feet long and a foot and a half wide and deep. The mdCockpit mission planning screen is fully integrated into the RC. All sensitive onboard electronics are designed, manufactured and assembled in Germany. It’s just as powerful and capable as our legacy systems but it’s even easier to use.”

EasyOne is an optimized and fully integrated drone system that will provide the lifting power to carry Microdrones LiDAR and photogrammetry surveying equipment. It improves upon the company’s legacy drones in three key areas:

EasyOne is Easier to Transport.

EasyOne features a significantly smaller operational form factor with the same payload capacity of the md4-1000 platform. In addition to a smaller operational form factor, the EasyOne packs down even smaller, fitting the drone, remote, charger, two batteries and the payload into a protective storage case that’s small and light enough to bring anywhere. 

EasyOne has an Improved RC Controller and mdCockpit Interface.

EasyOne will feature an entirely new controller design that provides an enhanced user interface and safety features.

Combined device and integrated remote control- the RC and tablet are one integrated control unit.

FPV available directly on the remote

EasyOne is easy to use. 

Heriard-Dubreuil explains, “We want to make it even easier for geospatial professionals to adopt this technology and make it a part of their daily work. We offer complete systems to plan flights, fly data collection in the field, process data and then visualize it for better decision making. You are getting a fully integrated package from one company; it includes the drone, RC, mdCockpit flight planning software, survey LiDAR+ imagery payload, LP360 data processing software, workflow, training, and support. EasyOne is the complete package.”

Vincent Legrand, Vice President of Global Sales adds, “Plus, as part of the EasyOne lineup customers can take advantage of the all-new Easy Replacement Program. Should you have an accident or problem in the field, this program gets you up and running with an EasyOne replacement in a timely manner.”  

True to its promise, Microdrones offers fully integrated systems and it launches the new aircraft platform with three fully integrated LiDAR sensor options to meet your needs. ... ' 

Drone Hitching a Ride

New Drone Can Hitch a Ride on a Moving Car Hitchhiker latches on using trajectory tracking and suction cups    MICHELLE HAMPSON  

A box with a picture of a small teal car in front of a white backdrop, and a drone attached to the box's back

The new Hitchhiker drone developed by researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University can land on vertical moving surfaces. SENSEN LIU

JOURNAL WATCH DRONE SURVEYING

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.

Drones are being used for everything, it seems: surveillance, delivery tasks, search and rescue efforts. But as these handy fliers take on more unique and difficult tasks, they need to be able to land in increasingly challenging scenarios. Now, a newly designed drone called Hitchhiker is able to land not just on inclined surfaces, but inclined surfaces in motion—like the side of a moving car.

Sensen Liu designed Hitchhiker as part of his postdoctoral work at the Lab of Cooperative Intelligence of Unmanned Systems at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s School of Mechanical Engineering. “Our interest stems from the fact that many structures—including buildings, bridges, and ground vehicles—feature inclined surfaces that are difficult for traditional drones to land on,” he explains. “By creating drones with this capability, we can leverage these surfaces as landing sites and expand the possibilities for the use of drone technology.”

Liu’s team is particularly interested in developing drones that can land on the side of moving cars. “The drone would be capable of scouting the surrounding environment while the automobile is in motion, allowing for real-time analysis of the environment,” explains Liu.

Once the drone is done scouting, it could latch onto the side of the car in order to help conserve energy, delaying the time needed before its batteries must be swapped or recharged.

To create such a drone, Liu and colleagues, under the supervision of Wei Dong, an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, developed a trajectory planning algorithm that accounts for the individual thrust of each rotor of the quadcopter. It utilizes a two-stage tracking approach that analyzes both the drone’s position and attitude.  ... ' 

Metal Detecting from the Air

Recall a DOD project looking a a related problem.   Hope this does not become an issue in greater Europe.

Metal-Detecting Drone Could Autonomously Find Land Mines A drone with 5 degrees of freedom can safely detect buried objects from the air.  By Evan Ackerman 

Several stitched-together photographs of gray three-propellered drones with metal detectors hovering just above grass

This composite photo shows how a tricopter drone with a lidar and metal detector can fly around an obstacle close to the ground.

Metal detecting can be a fun hobby, or it can be a task to be completed in deadly earnest—if the buried treasure you’re searching for includes land mines and explosive remnants of war. This is an enormous, dangerous problem: Something like 12,000 square kilometers worldwide are essentially useless and uninhabitable because of the threat of buried explosives, and thousands and thousands of people are injured or killed every year.

While there are many different ways of detecting mines and explosives, none of them are particularly quick or easy. For obvious reasons, sending a human out into a minefield with a metal detector is not the safest way of doing things. So, instead, people send anything else that they possibly can, from machines that can smash through minefields with brute force to well-trained rats that take a more passive approach by sniffing out explosive chemicals.

Because the majority of mines are triggered by pressure or direct proximity, it may seem that a drone would be the ideal way to detect them nonexplosively. However, unless you’re only detecting over a perfectly flat surface (and perhaps not even then) your detector won’t be positioned ideally most of the time, and you might miss something, which is not a viable option for mine detection.

But now a novel combination of a metal detector and a drone with 5 degrees of freedom is under development at the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zurich. It may provide a viable solution to remote land-mine detection, by using careful sensing and localization along with some twisting motors to keep the detector reliably close to the ground.  ...' 

Robots let ChatGPT touch the Real World

This was mentioned previously, intriguing to me, following up on a possible supply chain area application.  Link from below provide more information on the details.

Robots let ChatGPT touch the real world thanks to Microsoft     By Benj Edwards

 Last week, Microsoft researchers announced an experimental framework to control robots and drones using the language abilities of ChatGPT, a popular AI language model created by OpenAI. Using natural language commands, ChatGPT can write special code that controls robot movements. A human then views the results and adjusts as necessary until the task gets completed successfully.

ChatGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base in history, report says

The research arrived in a paper titled "ChatGPT for Robotics: Design Principles and Model Abilities," authored by Sai Vemprala, Rogerio Bonatti, Arthur Bucker, and Ashish Kapoor of the Microsoft Autonomous Systems and Robotics Group.

In a demonstration video, Microsoft shows robots—apparently controlled by code written by ChatGPT while following human instructions—using a robot arm to arrange blocks into a Microsoft logo, flying a drone to inspect the contents of a shelf, or finding objects using a robot with vision capabilities.

Microsoft's "ChatGPT for Robotics" demonstration video.

To get ChatGPT to interface with robotics, the researchers taught ChatGPT a custom robotics API. When given instructions like "pick up the ball," ChatGPT can generate robotics control code just as it would write a poem or complete an essay. After a human inspects and edits the code for accuracy and safety, the human operator can execute the task and evaluate its performance.

In this way, ChatGPT accelerates robotic control programming, but it's not an autonomous system. "We emphasize that the use of ChatGPT for robotics is not a fully automated process," reads the paper, "but rather acts as a tool to augment human capacity."

Microsoft Researchers Use ChatGPT to Control Robots, Drones

Seems very novel, but makes sense, pics at the link below, shows the approack,

Microsoft Researchers Use ChatGPT to Control Robots, Drones

PC Magazine, Michael Kan,  in PCMag, February 21, 2023

Microsoft scientists are controlling robots and aerial drones with OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot. The researchers used ChatGPT to simplify the process of programming software commands to guide the robots, because the artificial intelligence model was trained on massive datasets of human text. They initially outlined in a text prompt the various commands the model could use to control a given robot, which ChatGPT used to write the computer code for the robot. The researchers programmed ChatGPT to fly a drone and have it perform actions, as well as to control a robot arm to assemble the Microsoft logo from wooden blocks.

Full Article

Walking-Flying Spidar

 Complex but very interesting thing out of Tokyo,   Can get you some ware fast and then walk the rest of the way.  The arrival may be scary,  but you then have the last 100 meters.    Instructive pix at the link show complexity involved,  

Oh, Good: A Flying Robotic SPIDAR Instead of actuators, this quadruped uses ducted thrusters to walk and fly    By Evan Ackerman

Robots with multimodal locomotion capability are almost always a compromise, because usually they’re a hodgepodge of mobility systems that don’t really work together. It’d be possible to make a legged robot fly by stapling a bunch of propellers to it, but at any given time, either the legs or the propellers are going to be mostly just awkward extra mass. Some robots make this compromise more elegantly than others, but it’s still a compromise.

A new quadrupedal robot under development at The University of Tokyo called SPIDAR aims to minimize this compromise by combining legs and propellers and relying on that combination for both walking and flying locomotion—instead of leg actuators, it’s got vectorable leg thrusters that can both move leg joints individually and get the entire robot completely airborne.

SPIDAR, in what is perhaps one of the worst backronyms of all time, stands for “SPherIcally vectorable and Distributed rotors assisted Air-ground amphibious quadruped Robot.” It is absolutely not a spider, since it has four legs rather than eight, but it does look sufficiently leggy to set off a similar squick response.  ... ' 

Better LIDAR for Driving

Compact system could be better connected to smaller devices ...  like minidrones.

Compact, Non-Mechanical 3D LiDAR System Could Make Autonomous Driving Safer

Optica.org,  February 9, 2023

Researchers at Japan's Kyoto University have developed a palm-sized non-mechanical three-dimensional (3D) LiDAR system that combines the capabilities of conventional beam-scanning LiDAR systems and flash LiDAR to improve the safety of autonomous driving. Comprised of a dually modulated photonic-crystal laser (DM-PCSEL) and a time-of-flight camera, the system can measure the distance and automatically track the motion of poorly reflective objects. Said Kyoto University's Susumu Noda, "The DM-PCSEL integrates non-mechanical, electronically controlled beam scanning with flash illumination used in flash LiDAR to acquire a full 3D image with a single flash of light. This unique source allows us to achieve both flash and scanning illumination without any moving parts or bulky external optical elements, such as lenses and diffractive optical elements."

Full Article   

Weaponizing Starlink?

 At what point is something directly weaponized?  In support of military activity?

SpaceX curbed Ukraine's use of Starlink internet for drones -company president  By Joey Roulette  in Reuters

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - SpaceX has taken steps to prevent Ukraine's military from using the company's Starlink satellite internet service for controlling drones in the region during the country's war with Russia, SpaceX's president said Wednesday.

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, which has provided Ukraine's military with broadband communications in its defense against Russia's military, was "never never meant to be weaponized," Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, said during a conference in Washington, D.C.

"However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement," she said.  ... 

Piloting Drones Reliably

 Increasing useful control.  

Piloting Drone Reliably with Mobile Communications

Research News / February 01, 2023

Drones are operating increasingly in areas out of sight of the person controlling them. However, conventional remote controls have a limited range, which makes them unsuitable for these flights. On the other hand, simple mobile network-based systems have so far been unable to guarantee a reliable connection when mobile network loads are high or where there is a lack of network coverage. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, HHI have joined forces with partners in the SUCOM project to develop a new mobile network system that can be used to control drones even over long distances and over difficult terrain.

Autonomous drones that communicate via mobile networks often do not have a stable connection. A lack of network coverage is one explanation for outages. Experts also suspect that drones operating in high altitudes can access too many cell towers at the same time and keep switching between network cells, which can lead to disconnection. Researchers at Fraunhofer HHI, on the other hand, found that the communication protocols that drones use and that regulate the flow of data between the drone and the controller pose problems. If they are not robust enough for fluctuating data rates, some data packets arrive more slowly, and some are lost altogether. Fraunhofer HHI researchers therefore joined forces with Wingcopter, the Hessian drone manufacturer, Emqopter GmbH and CiS GmbH to develop new communication protocols that are insensitive to jerky data streams. The drone stays connected, even if the data rate fluctuates. Safety-critical information required for the creation of aerial photographs, such as position, altitude, flight direction, speed and other data, can be transmitted without interruption – a key prerequisite for the high safety requirements in aviation.

Highest Level of Reliability

“For comparison, we equipped a drone with a commercially available LTE system and with our SUCOM mobile network module, which has the new communication protocols,” says Tom Piechotta, a scientist at Fraunhofer HHI. "While the connection that used the conventional module kept dropping out, the SUCOM module provided a stable connection. Thanks to our new protocols, the connection is so stable that there are no interruptions.” For the researcher, this is a clear indication that disruptions in drones are not solely caused by a lack of network coverage.

The SUCOM mobile network module can also be installed in drones that are already in use: In Malawi, for example, drones equipped with the new module deliver medicines, blood supplies and other vital materials to the population during the rainy season, covering distances of up to 40 kilometers. They take off from four airfields, each of which has a “remote pilot” who enters the current route into the system and defines the waypoints that will guide the drone. One click is all it takes to send the flight plan to the drone. The data needed to make this happen is sent to a server in Cape Town, from where it is transmitted to the SUCOM module and then on to the flight controller on the drone. While in transit, the drone is monitored continuously by the remote pilot in real time. The drone is also equipped with satellite technology, which can be used if the DSL connection fails. The drones can also be operated via a smartphone and VPN connection, if needed. ... ' 

Russia Is Jamming More GPS Satellite Signals

Use of Jamming versus Sat Signals, GPS

Russia Is Jamming More GPS Satellite Signals Around Moscow

By New Scientist, December 27, 2022

Map of GPS Interference near Moscow for 26 December 2022.

Credit: GPSJam

Russia has accelerated its jamming of global positioning system (GPS) satellites around Moscow, apparently to deter long-range strikes by Ukrainian drones, according to the GPSJam monitoring website.

The ramp-up followed drone strikes on two Russian airbases earlier this month, says Dana Goward at the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, Alexandria, VA. Russia has jammed satellite navigation following drone strikes before, and it has various military mobile jamming systems that broadcast radio noise to disrupt weak signals. Operators directly pilot short-range drones, making GPS use unnecessary. However, long-range strikes generally need GPS to navigate, so jamming would thwart remotely orchestrated strikes.

Jamming won’t protect against all drones, however. Shahad-136 drones, for example, which Russia has used against Ukraine, are equipped with navigation units that allow them to pass through areas of jamming.

From New Scientist   View Full Article

Helicopter on Mars

 Evan Ackerman talks the remarkable success of the Mars helicopter Perseverance. Nicely done NASA.  The idea of a detachable drone shows its power of application,  A means of managing opportunistic data gathering in very unordered spaces.

Mars Helicopter Just Keeps on Going 

Maybe NASA’s little Martian flyer should be the one called Perseverance   By Evan ACKERMAN

The original mission of the Mars Helicopter (named Ingenuity) was to successfully complete a single 30-second long flight on Mars. That happened back in April. After several more successful flights, Ingenuity’s 30-day mission came to an end, but the helicopter was doing so well that NASA decided to keep it flying. Several months later, JPL promised that Ingenuity would “complete flight operations no later than the end of August,” but as of late November, the little helicopter has completed 17 flights with no sign of slowing down. ... ' 

Pilotless Cargo Carrying Planes

 With Drones everywhere, inevitable.   Emerging Market

The cargo hauling aircraft with no pilots on board

Published  4 days ago

A scaled-down version of the Black Swan at an airfield in Bulgaria

By Michael Dempsey  Reporter  in the BBC

Svilen Rangelov sports an impressive beard. It's eight years' worth of growth he says.   The beard dates back to when he and his younger brother, an aerospace engineer by training, formed Dronamics as Europe's answer to the emerging market for cargo drones.

He agreed with his brother Konstantin that they would shave their beards only after the first flight of the drone they've been building in their native Bulgaria.

At the time he established Dronamics big tech giants like Amazon were experimenting with drone deliveries to domestic addresses. But Mr Rangelov never believed in the concept of personal goods delivered by the drone.

The practical difficulties of flying a drone right up to someone's front door were obvious to Mr Rangelov. "We couldn't buy into the concept of small drones. We took a different approach."

This take on drone delivery will bear fruit when the prototype cargo aircraft takes to the air.  ... ' 

An Example of Drones Sensing Rare or Hidden Things

I like the hidden and rare sensing aspect of the problem.   Other Applications? 

 Daredevil Drones Find Nearly Extinct Plants Hiding in Cliffs

Reuters, Daisy Chung; Gloria Dickie; Simon Scarr, December 10, 2022

Scientists at Hawaii's nonprofit National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) and the state's Division of Forestry and Wildlife are using drones to find and collect samples of nearly extinct plants in cliffs and other hard-to-reach locations. NTBG's Ben Nyberg and researchers at Canadian aerospace company Outreach Robotics developed the Multi-Use Aerial Manipulator Bidirectionally Actuated (Mamba), which dangles on a cable below a drone. The remote-piloted robot arm can detach from the drone to pluck plant samples in perilous regions as far as 4 meters (13 feet) away. Mamba has so far collected 29 cuttings or seeds from 12 endangered plant species on the island of Kauai. Nyberg suggested the robot "can be the difference between extinction and survival" for such plant species.

Full Article

Drones on Strings as People Puppeteers?

 Quite new thought to me.  Though our look at group tasks for drones might have used this.

Drones on Strings Could Puppeteer People in VR

New Scientist, Matthew Sparkes, November 25, 2022

Researchers at Germany's Saarland University and Canada's University of Toronto have tested a system that uses a drone attached to a user’s finger via string to mimic the action of button-pushing in virtual reality. Saarland's Martin Feick said the challenges of maintaining the drone's stability while pulling the string include its tendency to oscillate or drift, while coordinating multiple drones so they do not crash or tangle up will be problematic. Feick acknowledged testing the drones safely with people is currently infeasible, so the researchers deployed nets to catch the drones. The drones also can produce distracting sounds and drafts, although Feick said soundless blade-free drones capable of ultrasonic levitation show potential.

Full article.

Chinese Drones in Restricted Spaces

Of course there are now many drones in that area, many Chinese built. But still a valid concern. 

 In American Military News: 

Hundreds of Chinese-made drones have flown into restricted airspaces over Washington, D.C., in recent months and officials are playing catch-up to stop the foreign-made tech from spying on those restricted areas. While China may not be controlling these drones directly, any Chinese-made devices could still be covertly sending data back to China.

Sources told POLITICO they don’t believe the Chinese government is directing the drones, which are made by China-based DJI. But officials are beginning to see risks in U.S. consumers buying up Chinese tech that can enter one of the world’s most secure airspaces and potentially become another government’s surveillance system, or worse.

“The reality is, people on the tech side always said, ‘Look, at any point in time the Chinese can take control of a DJI that’s flying in the air,’” an anonymous government contractor told POLITICO.

Commercial drones, including those by DJI, use “geofencing” to prohibit drones from entering into restricted airspace such as those over D.C. But a government contractor told POLITICO there are “YouTube videos that could walk your grandparents through” how to bypass those constraints and allow users to fly their drones wherever they want.  .... ' 

Edible Drones

Narrow and novel  application here.

ACM NEWS

Stranded Without Food? Edible Drone Has Snackable Wings  By CNET, November 17, 2022

The wings of this drone are nutritious and, depending on what you think about rice cakes, delicious.

The drone's design uses some familiar-looking airplane-like components; the big difference is that its fixed wing is made from rice cakes and gelatin.

It's a nightmare scenario. You're on an ambitious mountain hike when you get lost, injured or stranded. The good news is help is finally on the way, but the bad news is it's going to take time to reach you and you're out of food. That's when a buzzing drone comes flying in for a landing. Not only do you get the snacks, medicine or water it's carrying, you can eat the wings to tide you over until the rescue team arrives.

This scenario could become real. A team with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) has developed a prototype edible drone. The munchable machine is part of a broader project called RoboFood. RoboFood is about investigating edible robots for humans and animals as well as foods that behave like robots.

The team published its work online with the title "Towards edible drones for rescue missions: design and flight of nutritional wings." The study is tackling the problem of getting commercial drones to carry enough of a payload to help people in emergency situations.

  Full Article.   

Seeing Through Walls with WiFI

 Security Issue reported in ACM. technical abstract, related issues previously reported. 

Seeing through Walls with Wi-FI   in ACM.

ABSTRACT

We present Wi-Peep - a new location-revealing privacy attack on non-cooperative Wi-Fi devices. Wi-Peep exploits loopholes in the 802.11 protocol to elicit responses from Wi-Fi devices on a network that we do not have access to. It then uses a novel time-of-flight measurement scheme to locate these devices. Wi-Peep works without any hardware or software modifications on target devices and without requiring access to the physical space that they are deployed in. Therefore, a pedestrian or a drone that carries a Wi-Peep device can estimate the location of every Wi-Fi device in a building. Our Wi-Peep design costs $20 and weighs less than 10 g. We deploy it on a lightweight drone and show that a drone flying over a house can estimate the location of Wi-Fi devices across multiple floors to meter-level accuracy. Finally, we investigate different mitigation techniques to secure future Wi-Fi devices against such attacks.  ...  '

Robotic Falcons to Deter Bird Strikes

 Novel Application.  might also deter birds eating key crops. 

Robotic Falcon Designed to Help Prevent Bird Strikes, By CNN, October 28, 2022

Collisions between birds and aircraft, known as bird strikes, can result in aircraft damage, as well as delays and cancellation of flights, costing the International Civil Aviation Organization a reported $1.4 billion each year.

Researchers at the University of Groningen (UG) in the Netherlands have developed a robotic peregrine falcon in a bid to prevent birds from colliding with aircraft.

The ground-controlled RobotFalcon imitates a falcon's movements to ward off birds, using propellers on its wings and a camera on its head to facilitate a "first-person view while steering."  ... 

UG's Rolf Storms said tests near the Dutch city of Workum showed the robot cleared flocks from fields within five minutes of taking off, with half the sites cleared within 70 seconds; a drone only managed to clear 80% of the birds from fields in the same time.  ... 

From CNN

View Full Article    

Drones Work Like Bees

ACM TECHNEWS

3D Printing Drones Work Like Bees

By Imperial College London (U.K.)

September 23, 2022An international team of scientists led by the U.K.'s Imperial College London (ICL) and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) developed a fleet of three-dimensional (3D) printing drones that can build and repair structures in flight.

The bee-inspired Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM) fleet operates cooperatively from a blueprint, adjusting on the fly.

The fleet includes material-depositing BuilDrones and quality-controlling ScanDrones, as well as a controller that monitors their progress and can intervene based on real-time feedback from the drones.

Said ICL's Mirko Kovac, "We believe our fleet of drones could help reduce the costs and risks of construction in the future, compared to traditional manual methods."

From Imperial College London (U.K.)