Tag: drones

Haven’t noticed, yet? Drones already delivering pizza.

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A self-piloting Zipline drone drops a package on a test flight

Drone deliveries could be dropping into your life, too, as the technology involved matures and expands beyond isolated test projects. In 2023, drones could replace vans and your own trip to the store when you need medicine, takeout dinners, cordless drill batteries or dishwasher soap.

Today, Alphabet Wing drones reach hundreds of thousands of people in Australia, Finland and Texas and will expand its service in 2023, according to Jonathan Bass, who runs marketing for the business. “I would expect those to go into the millions,” he said of the number of people Wing will be able to reach.

Today, Alphabet Wing drones reach hundreds of thousands of people in Australia, Finland and Texas and will expand its service in 2023, according to Jonathan Bass, who runs marketing for the business. “I would expect those to go into the millions,” he said of the number of people Wing will be able to reach.

Looking forward to the projected rapid expansion. With increased availability over recent years, our pickup and delivery orders have increased dramatically. Mostly grocery shopping. And I see every reason for this sort of option – if affordable – to increase share and frequency of deliveries.

Good News for Reforestation

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DroneSeed, a company that uses fleets of drones to reforest areas burned in wildfires, received approval in October from the Federal Aviation Administration for its heavy-lift drones to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight and to expand its use of heavy-lift drone swarms to California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. They previously had FAA authorization to operate in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

The FAA’s action allows DroneSeed to begin reforesting once a fire is contained and airspace is clear. Their aircraft drop seeds that are encapsulated in vessels consisting of four to six seeds, fertilizer, natural pest deterrents, and fibrous material which absorbs water and increases survivability.

Good news all round. A great use for new tech. An added benefit in new means of reforestation. Bravo!

Drones on Wall Street

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Training the trainer

Drones have arrived on Wall Street, reports cnbc.com. Major investment banks are deploying the craft to offer important clients “a bird’s-eye view” of companies they’re interested in merging with or acquiring (M&A)…

Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s top M&A advisors, is one such company employing drones. Stephan Feldgoise, the firm’s global co-head of mergers and acquisitions, said, “We have been selling asset-based businesses all over the world using drones for site visits and fly-overs. It gives buyers the confidence they need because when you are purchasing a business, you want to see, touch and feel what you’re buying. ” He added, “Drones are likely here to stay. We believe it will change the M&A landscape forever.”

The personal on-site walk-through is over. COVID-19 put an end to that. Looks like a positive change. More than 95% of the several hundred deals Goldman closed since the start of the pandemic utilized drones for an on-site tour.

What’s in the skies over Colorado and Nebraska

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Mysterious swarms of giant drones have dotted the Colorado and Nebraska night sky since last week, The Denver Post first reported.

The drones appear and disappear at roughly the same time each night in swarms of at least 17 and up to 30. The drones appear to measure about 6 feet across.

Local and federal government authorities say they have no idea where the drones are coming from. They do not appear to be malicious, however, and a drone expert says they appear to be searching or mapping out the area.

Buwahahahahah!

Saudis spent $62+billion last year on armaments. Yemeni Houthis just attacked with $15K drones.

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Half Saudi Arabia’s oil production shut down. 5% of global oil supply.

❝ Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched drone attacks on key Saudi oil facilities on Saturday, setting off blazes that could be seen from space and showcasing how cheap new technologies allow even minor militant groups to inflict serious damage on major powers…

It was not clear how badly damaged the facilities were, but shutting them down for more than a few days would disrupt world oil supplies. Between them, the two centers can process 8.45 million barrels of crude oil a day, amounting to the vast majority of the production in Saudi Arabia, which produces almost one-tenth of the world’s crude oil…

❝ The difference in resources available to the attacker and the victim could hardly have been greater, illustrating how David-and-Goliath style attacks using cheap drones are adding a new layer of volatility to the Middle East.

Such attacks not only damage vital economic infrastructure, they increase security costs and spread fear — yet they are remarkably cheap. The drones used in Saturday’s attack may have cost $15,000 or less to build, said Wim Zwijnenburg, a senior researcher on drones at PAX, a Dutch peace organization.

The Global Military-Industrial Complex still hasn’t learned crap about guerrilla warfare. Sure, the Pentagon and their peers know how to spend taxpayer dollars by the bucketload. They’re mostly backed up by political hacks who still think the best solution to civilized inequity is to resolve disquiet and resentment with weapons ranging from bullets to bombs. Nothing cheap of course. No self-respecting graduate of West Point would be found killing significant populations without delivery systems costing million$.

RTFA. Maximum cost per each of these drones was about $15,000. A third of the price of the average new pickup truck bought in the GOUSA.

Drones Drop Poison Bombs to Fight An Island’s Invasion by Rats

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❝ Release just one pregnant rat on an island and soon enough the invasive predators will have decimated that pristine environment like an atom bomb. Sure, rats on their own are pretty neat, but we’ve got a nasty habit of transporting them where they don’t belong, at which point they transform into menaces.

Such is the plight of the Galapagos Island of Seymour Norte, a speck of 455 acres off the coast of Ecuador. In 2007, conservationists succeeded in ridding the island of invasive rats, but a decade later, the fiends had returned, likely by swimming from the neighboring island of Baltra.

❝ Realizing the impending doom of Seymour Norte’s endemic species—rats eat both the eggs and hatchlings of birds, as well as reptiles like iguanas—conservationists again declared war, this time unleashing a new weapon: drones. Flying autonomously along predetermined routes, the drones have been dropping rodenticide bombs with extreme precision, down to half a meter accuracy. On Seymour Norte, officials and conservationists are once again banishing the rats, but the war against invasive species for the purity of the world’s islands has only just begun…

❝ An island is an exceptional place, each one host to an ecosystem like no other on Earth. One common theme among islands, though, is that they’re often devoid of mammals (save for bats), which unlike birds and insects struggle to make the journey from the mainland. So when a mammal like a rat does arrive, it sends the ecosystem into chaos.

And that’s the case on Seymour Norte. RTFA for the gory details.

Replanting a forest from the air

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❝ Wildfires are consuming our forests and grasslands faster than we can replace them. It’s a vicious cycle of destruction and inadequate restoration rooted, so to speak, in decades of neglect of the institutions and technologies needed to keep these environments healthy.

DroneSeed is a Seattle-based startup that aims to combat this growing problem with a modern toolkit that scales: drones, artificial intelligence and biological engineering. And it’s even more complicated than it sounds…

❝ Earlier this year, DroneSeed was awarded the first multi-craft, over-55-pounds unmanned aerial vehicle license ever issued by the FAA. Its custom UAV platforms, equipped with multispectral camera arrays, high-end lidar, six-gallon tanks of herbicide and proprietary seed dispersal mechanisms have been hired by several major forest management companies, with government entities eyeing the service as well.

RTFA. Please. Interesting, useful tech being used for progressive ends benefitting our species. Perhaps, if sufficient numbers of human beings get off their rusty-dusties and build political movements to support and involve solutions like this – we can turn around some of the decades of profits-before-anything-else ideology that has destroyed so much of this world, this nation’s potential.

Mako unmanned wingman “cleared for takeoff” — and lots of sales!

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Kratos

❝ Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has been granted approval by the US government to market its UTAP-22 Mako ‘unmanned wingman’ internationally…

The US State Department has permitted the San Diego-based company to promote its Mako jet-powered unmanned aircraft system to certain undisclosed European and Asia-Pacific region countries.

❝ …The Mako offers fighter-like performance and is designed to function as a wingman to manned aircraft, as a force multiplier in contested airspace, or to be deployed independently or in groups of UASs. It is capable of carrying both weapons and sensor systems.

It will obey all orders. No educated, independent thought allowed.

Earlier post: https://eideard.com/2017/06/18/the-u-s-air-force-is-ready-to-try-disposable-drones/

Amazon patents drones wirelessly charging your electric car while driving — Who? Wha?

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Click to enlarge — Reuters/Brendan McDermid

As countries around the world are putting more electric vehicles on the road, they’re also struggling to power those engines. For now, countries are focusing on adding charging stations, but in the future there may be a more mobile option available to drivers: flying drones that come to you.

In early October, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Amazon the patent for developing a drone that can connect to transfer electricity to a car in motion. Amazon filed the application in 2014, the patent document showed…

How cool is that?

In a nutshell, when the vehicle is low on battery, it will contact a central server, which communicates with the car to figure out the amount of energy needed for its intended destination before sending out an unmanned flying machine with some form of battery to service the car. Several authentication steps would be required to prevent malicious use, according to the filing. The new patent might go well with an earlier Amazon application that envisions recharging stations on top of public street lights for flying drones to use themselves.

So, if you’ve been wandering around the countryside in your full-electric AWD Ford Watanabe checking out new fishing spots – and weren’t paying attention to your car’s charged level – the car will do it for you. A new level of Amazon Prime service may be required. And sounds useful to me. If I was still living my life on the road.