Browse Topic: Unmanned aerial vehicles
Headquartered in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Unusual Machines describes itself as a “classic American technology company born from garage tinkerers and hobbyists, focused on serving the emerging drone industry with unique and innovative products.” The company recently launched a new low-cost flight controller for drones, the Riot Brave F7, that achieved “Blue UAS” certification from the Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in August. The Riot Brave F7 - just $58 - features a STMF722RET6 processor equipped with Bosch accelerometer and barometer, and has 16Mb of built in Blackbox Memory. While the company developed Riot Brave F7 primarily as a low cost flight controller option for FPV drones, there are broader possibilities for it, including military applications.
Nowadays, there are many technologies emerging like firefighting robots, quadcopters, and drones which are capable of operating in hazardous disaster scenarios. In recent years, fire emergencies have become an increasingly serious problem, leading to hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and the destruction of property worth millions of dollars. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), India recorded approximately 1,218 fire incidents resulting in 1,694 deaths in 2020 alone. Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that fires account for around 265,000 deaths each year, with the majority occurring in low- and middle-income countries. The existing fire-extinguishing systems are often inefficient and lack proper testing, causing significant delays in firefighting efforts. These delays become even more critical in situations involving high-rise buildings or bushfires, where reaching the affected areas is particularly challenging. The leading causes of
Systems Engineering is a method for developing complex products, aiming to improve cost and time estimates and ensure product validation against its requirements. This is crucial to meet customer needs and maintain competitiveness in the market. Systems Engineering activities include requirements, configuration, interface, deadlines, and technical risks management, as well as definition and decomposition of requirements, implementation, integration, and verification and validation testing. The use of digital tools in Systems Engineering activities is called Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). The MBSE approach helps engineers manage system complexity, ensuring project information consistency, facilitating traceability and integration of elements throughout the product lifecycle. Its benefits include improved communication, traceability, information consistency, and complexity management. Major companies like Boeing already benefit from this approach, reducing their product
Researchers at Caltech took an important step toward using reinforcement learning to adaptively learn how turbulent wind can change over time, and then uses that knowledge to control a UAV based on what it is experiencing in real time. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA In nature, flying animals sense coming changes in their surroundings, including the onset of sudden turbulence, and quickly adjust to stay safe. Engineers who design aircraft would like to give their vehicles the same ability to predict incoming disturbances and respond appropriately. Indeed, disasters such as the fatal Singapore Airlines flight this past May in which more than 100 passengers were injured after the plane encountered severe turbulence, could be avoided if aircraft had such automatic sensing and prediction capabilities combined with mechanisms to stabilize the vehicle. Now a team of researchers from Caltech's Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST) and NVIDIA has taken an
Deliberate RF jamming of drones has become one of the most common battlefield tactics in Ukraine. But what is jamming, how does it work and how can it be countered by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the field? Radio frequency (RF) jamming of drones involves deliberate interference with the radio signals used for communication between drones and their operators.
Airbus Marignane, France laurence.petiard@airbus.com
Northrop Grumman San Diego, CA jacqueline.rainey@ngc.com
Deliberate RF jamming of drones has become one of the most common battlefield tactics in Ukraine. But what is jamming, how does it work and how can it be countered by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the field?
Anduril Industries Orange County, CA Contact@anduril.com
In non-cooperative environments, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have to land without artificial markers, which is a key step towards achieving full autonomy. However, the existing vision-based schemes have the common problems of poor robustness and generalization, and the LiDAR-based schemes have the disadvantages of low resolution, high power consumption and high weight. In this paper, we propose an UAV landing system equipped with a binocular camera to preform 3D reconstruction and select the safe landing zone. The whole system only consists of a stereo camera, and the innovation of the solution is fusing the stereo matching algorithm and monocular depth estimation(MDE) model to get a robust prediction on the metric depth. The whole landing system consists of a stereo matching module, a monocular depth estimation (MDE) module, a depth fusion module, and a safe landing zone selection module. The stereo matching module uses Semi-Global Matching (SGM) algorithm to calculate the
With the rapid advancement of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology, their assigned missions have become significantly more intricate. Individual UAVs are no longer sufficient to meet these diverse and demanding requirements. There is now a shift towards employing multiple UAVs operating collaboratively to address complex tasks, replacing the reliance on singular units. This study focuses on the complexities of coordinated flight within UAV formations. A dynamic consensus optimal control algorithm is proposed for distributed formations, grounded in optimal control theory. Furthermore, the enhanced control method is validated via simulation on a semi-physical visualization platform, effectively closing the gap between real-world formation requirements and simulation outcomes. The results from these simulations underscore that the proposed method effectively preserves UAV formation integrity and demonstrates exceptional applicability in real-world scenarios.
Yaw control for aircraft using the rudder faces challenges in resisting fast time-varying uncertainty due to the relatively slower response of the rudder. In hybrid unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with both rudders and rotors, the introduction of powered yaw control offers novel solutions for addressing fast time-varying uncertainty by leveraging the quicker response of rotors compared to traditional rudders. This paper presents a hierarchical yaw control approach for hybrid unmanned aerial vehicles, comprising a nominal control for rudders to achieve the desired yaw tracking and a constrained powered yaw control for rotors to resist fast time-varying uncertainty. Given the constrained amplitude of powered yaw control, it is imperative that the designed auxiliary input guarantees adherence to its constraint. Firstly, a nonlinear control for nominal hybrid unmanned aerial vehicle system is formulated to deal with the nonlinearity model, rendering a modest nominal control for rudders
Delivered by Team Hersa, a joint Defense Equipment & Support (DE&S) and Defense, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) enterprise, the Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW) can detect, track and engage a range of threats across land, air and sea. The system uses radio waves to disrupt or damage critical electronic components inside enemy platforms, such as drones, causing them to stop in their tracks or fall out of the sky. As such, it offers a solution for the protection and defense of critical assets and bases. Capable of downing dangerous drone swarms with instant effect, at only 10p per shot, the RFDEW is a highly capable and cost-effective alternative to traditional missile-based air defense systems. It will be able to effect targets up to 1 km away, with further development in extending the range ongoing. Its high level of automation also means the system can be operated by a single person.
Carbon-fiber structural batteries are not entirely new, but now Sinonus, a company spun out of Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg, Sweden, is further developing the technology with carbon fibers that double as battery electrodes. The technology has already been demonstrated in low-power applications, and Sinonus will now develop it for use in a range of larger applications including, first, IoT devices and then drones, computers, electric vehicles and airplanes. By integrating the battery into carbon-fiber structures, Sinonus believes that an EV's weight could be reduced while the driving range could increase by as much as 70%. The carbon-fiber technology used by Sinonus originated at Oxeon, another Chalmers spin-off.
Delivered by Team Hersa, a joint Defense Equipment & Support (DE&S) and Defense, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) enterprise, the Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW) can detect, track and engage a range of threats across land, air and sea. The system uses radio waves to disrupt or damage critical electronic components inside enemy platforms, such as drones, causing them to stop in their tracks or fall out of the sky. As such, it offers a solution for the protection and defense of critical assets and bases.
A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has developed a drone that flies autonomously using neuromorphic image processing and control based on the workings of animal brains.
A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has developed a drone that flies autonomously using neuromorphic image processing and control based on the workings of animal brains.
Collins Aerospace Arlington, VA 781-522-3000
This SAE Aerospace Information Report (AIR) describes the Architecture Framework for Unmanned Systems (AFUS). AFUS comprises a Conceptual View, a Capabilities View, and an Interoperability View. The Conceptual View provides definitions and background for key terms and concepts used in the unmanned systems domain. The Capabilities View uses terms and concepts from the Conceptual View to describe capabilities of unmanned systems and of other entities in the unmanned systems domain. The Interoperability View provides guidance on how to design and develop systems in a way that supports interoperability.
Emergency personnel and first responders have the opportunity to document crash scenes while evidence is still recent. The growth of the drone market and the efficiency of documentation with drones has led to an increasing prevalence of aerial photography for incident sites. These photographs are generally of high resolution and contain valuable information including roadway evidence such as tire marks, gouge marks, debris fields, and vehicle rest positions. Being able to accurately map the captured evidence visible in the photographs is a key process in creating a scaled crash-scene diagram. Image rectification serves as a quick and straightforward method for producing a scaled diagram. This study evaluates the precision of the photo rectification process under diverse roadway geometry conditions and varying camera incidence angles.
Items per page:
50
1 – 50 of 936