Lifeboat Foundation

To maintain peak efficiency, solar cells must be regularly cleaned of dust and other accumulated dirt. However, many panels are installed in high or hard-to-reach locations, which makes cleaning them difficult, time-consuming, and also simply dangerous. One solution is to use aerial drones to spray soapy water on dirty solar panels. However, these drones often run out of battery quite quickly. In addition, they also do not make direct contact with the panels, so they may not completely wash away dirt.

To solve these problems, a Belgian startup, ART Robotics, has developed HELIOS, an automated cleaning service for solar panels. It’s a fully autonomous system that can access difficult-to-reach places and eliminates dangerous and costly work.

Continue reading “Meet HELIOS, an automated solar panel cleaning system” »

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has unveiled its latest jet-powered robotic drone, the Gambit, which is designed to use artificial intelligence and autonomous systems to fly alongside human-piloted aircraft and achieve air dominance.

General Atomics is known mainly for its drones like the SkyGuardian or the Mojave – robotic aircraft with very long endurance that can loiter over an area for extended periods for either reconnaissance or while awaiting the signal to take out a ground target with missiles like the Hellfire.

Now, the company has joined competitors like Boeing and Kratos to produce a full-on combat drone with the lines and performance of a fighter jet. According to GA-ASI President David R. Alexander, Gambit is an Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP), a flying team-mate that will work with piloted aircraft, penetrating into combat zones to detect, identify, and target adversaries at range and scale before they can become a threat to its human partner. In this way, fewer lives are put at risk and more time is gained for critical decision-making.

Elon Musk’s Starlink internet project continues to move forward, launch by launch.

SpaceX launched another 47 internet-beaming satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday morning.

Continue reading “Watch a SpaceX rocket fly for a record 11th time” »

A series of experiments using paper airplanes reveals new aerodynamic effects, a team of scientists has discovered. Its findings enhance our understanding of flight stability and could inspire new types of flying robots and small drones.

“The study started with simple curiosity about what makes a good paper airplane and specifically what is needed for smooth gliding,” explains Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and an author of the study, which appears in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. “Answering such basic questions ended up being far from child’s play. We discovered that the aerodynamics of how paper airplanes keep level flight is really very different from the stability of conventional airplanes.”

“Birds glide and soar in an effortless way, and paper airplanes, when tuned properly, can also glide for long distances,” adds author Jane Wang, a professor of engineering and physics at Cornell University. “Surprisingly, there has been no good mathematical model for predicting this seemingly simple but subtle gliding flight.”

Autonomous drone mapping startup Emesent has announced its latest survey-grade LiDAR payload: Hovermap ST. The lightweight, IP65-rated solution is being launched with Emesent’s new Automated Ground Control feature that, the company stresses, enables autonomous data capture in harsher environments than ever and for a wider range of use cases.

Emesent’s LiDAR payloads leverage a process called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), in which a drone builds a map and, at the same time, localizes the drone in that map.