Recent Updates

Following a major natural disaster, there’s no better way to quickly assess damage than by aerial survey. But companies doing that work following 2017’s intense hurricane season found that while flying the drones is easy, preparing the operation and sorting the data is anything but. At a panel program on drone use during last season’s […]

In the drone industry, operation beyond visual line of sight—BVLOS—is a holy grail of sorts. At AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2018 in Denver, a company called PrecisionHawk says it’s ready to market a drone that can safely detect and avoid other aircraft, making BVLOS practical now. view on YouTube

It’s a small step, but the Transportation Department on Monday took what could be the first move toward allowing the widespread commercial use of drones to transport cargo, and eventually, passengers as well. The DOT—the parent of the FAA—published a “notification of procedures” (PDF) on Monday stating that it will provide “certificate or exemption authority” […]

With more than 700 exhibitors at this week’s AUVSI XPONENTIAL show in Denver, there’s a drone for every purpose and the association says UAS applications are expanding. “This business is adding more and more jobs to the overall economy,” the association’s president, Brian Wynne, told some of the 8500 attendees at an opening-day keynote address. […]

Dick Collins didn’t know me at all in 1978 and didn’t owe me anything. But Dick did two memorable things for me, two career bookends really, that will last with me until I go West as he did this week. I was the new marcomm specialist at Collins Avionics, hired that hot summer in Cedar […]

Hardly a week goes by when another story about autonomous drones whisking passengers over traffic-choked city streets fails to portend the George Jetson future. Less in evidence are reports on rapid progress in the regulatory foundation for such technology and at this week’s AUVSI XPONENTIAL Expo in Denver, the crystal ball is hardly clearer. In […]

As drones multiply, as they are expected to do, incidents of GPS (or GNSS) jamming and spoofing are expected to rise in concert during the next decade. That poses not just a threat of loss of the vehicles, but also to nearby aircraft and unaware people on the ground, according to Jeremy Bennington of Spirent, […]

Private space startup Blue Origin launched its eighth test flight from Texas Sunday, boosting microgravity experiments and an instrumented dummy astronaut to an altitude of 66.5 miles, the company reported. The reusable New Shepard booster was making its second flight and landed successfully on a concrete pad near the launch point about eight minutes after […]

Hardly a week goes by when another story about autonomous drones whisking passengers over traffic-choked city streets fails to portend the George Jetson future. Less in evidence are reports on rapid progress in the regulatory foundation for such technology and at this week’s AUVSI XPONENTIAL Expo in Denver, the crystal ball is hardly clearer. In […]