Unmanned Vehicles

There were dozens of UAVs at this year’s Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show in Atlanta. AVweb took a few minutes to capture some on film. (Well, pixels, anyway.) view on YouTube

CNN has talked the FAA into letting it use a tethered drone to shoot news footage almost wherever it wants, up to an altitude of 400 feet. At the AUVSI show in Atlanta, AVweb got a look at this intriguing machine. view on YouTube

Not to be left behind in the disruptive wave of unmanned aircraft, Sikorsky Aircraft has developed a kit to convert its UH-60 Black Hawk to pilot-optional flight. At the AUVSI show in Atlanta this week, AVweb took a look at the new hardware. view on YouTube

At the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show in Atlanta, a company called Panoptes was demonstrating its cool new ultrasonic-based obstacle avoidance add-on for DJI Phantom drones. It’s retrofittable, too. Donnie Rogers gave us a tour of the product. view on YouTube

The FAA wants to make it easier for drone operators to know if they’re flying legally so on Wednesday, it announced a new geographically sensitive smartphone app that will instantly inform drone pilots if they’re legal to fly in the airspace they’re in. The new app is called B4UFly and will be available later this […]

I can’t speak for every other reporter in the room, but the FAA’s announcement at AUVSI Wednesday that it was partnering up—and my how they love that word—with a major news network, a railroad and a drone company to advance the cause of sUAS operation in the national airspace was just a little hard to […]

Sonex Aircraft will collaborate with Navmar Applied Sciences Corporation to develop an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle based on its Xenos line of motor gliders. Under the agreement, Oshkosh-based Sonex will produce the aircraft, to be called Teros, and ship them to NASC in Pennsylvania for UAV outfitting. The first prototype Teros is slated for delivery in […]

This week’s announcement that the FAA closed comments on the NPRM for small UAS so caught me by surprise that I never got around to submitting my own comments. Not that it matters much; my views were well represented by many others, perhaps with just a couple of exceptions I’ll get to in a moment. […]

The ever-intriguing X-37B space plane is slated for its fourth mission in May, this time to experiment with a propulsion system for military satellites, the Air Force announced this week. The target launch date is May 20, according to multiple news sources. The military has revealed little about past missions, prompting broad speculation about what […]

It was probably inevitable that drone demos would be a part of a major show and this year they’re appearing at Sun ‘n Fun in the exhibit area for the first time. In a booth sponsored by Yuneec and Drone23, you can see small quadcopters demonstrated inside a large net cage that’s big enough to […]