Lifeboat Foundation

NASA just took an important step toward making flying taxis a practical reality. The agency has started flight testing with Joby Aviation’s electric VTOL aircraft to help model and simulate future airspace with these taxis in service. The dry run began quietly, on August 30th, and will last through September 10th. The effort will include noise check using 50 microphones to gauge the “acoustic profile” of the air taxi throughout the course of a given flight.

This is the first eVTOL test as part of an Advanced Air Mobility campaign meant to spot gaps in the Federal Aviation Administration’s rules and ensure the agency is ready for commercial use of flying taxis alongside delivery drones and other unconventional aircraft. The data from the flight program will help with a fuller set of campaign tests in 2022 involving both other taxis and more complicated flight situations.

The overall program could better prepare the US for a glut of low-altitude air traffic if and when flying taxis enter widespread use. The early testing is also a minor coup for Joby. It’s ushering in crucial testing not long after buying Uber’s air taxi business and taking a $394 million investment from Toyota. There’s no telling if Joby will continue to play a prominent role, but this is clearly the kind of collaboration it was hoping for.

Finding people buried under debris is an extremely dangerous job for first responders. Researchers are building autonomous drones that could help.

A year after first being used in trials, drones will be deployed to accompany the UK coast guard air and sea vessels during search and rescue missions. The first craft flown in will be a Schiebel S-100 uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV), stationed at a helicopter base in the northern Wales coastal town of Caernarfon.

The Schiebel S-100 is a remotely flown safety overwatch and monitoring craft. It has been developed to help meet objectives of the UK’s revamped, tech-enhanced search and rescue services and assets program – the so-called UKSAR2G, due to begin operation in 2024.

China has shown off the prototype of its “Mars cruise drone” designed for surveillance work on future Mars missions, following the historic landing of a robotic rover on the Red Planet a few months ago.

The prototype of the miniature helicopter successfully passed the final acceptance, China’s National Space Science Center (CNNSC) announced on Wednesday. In the images shared by the science center, the prototype looks similar in appearance to NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, developed for its Perseverance mission this year.

The Chinese prototype sports two rotor blades, a sensor-and-camera base, and four thin legs, but there is no solar panel at the top like Ingenuity.

Drone delivery technology is ready to rock, says Alphabet’s Wing spinoff, ushering in a wild new era in which small deliveries can touch down within minutes of being ordered, traveling across town at highway speeds. The only holdup at this stage is red tape, and in the few places where that’s been cleared away – like the Australian city of Logan, Queensland – drone deliveries are already proving very popular.

Wing says it’s already made a whopping 50,000 deliveries in Logan, where it kicked off activities in2019through its own app and service, flying out coffees, snack packs, BBQ chickens, sushi rolls, hardware items and a range of other small packages on demand. Eleven local business are acting as suppliers at this point.

Continue reading “Wing says drone deliveries are taking off madly where they’re allowed” »

When it encounters oncoming traffic, it will autonomously fly to the side of the track and let traffic pass.

‘’Baykar says the Akinci, Turkish for “raider,” can attack targets in the air and on the ground, and operate alongside fighter jets, flying higher and staying in the air longer than Turkey’s existing pilotless planes. The drones will carry a range of missiles developed by Turkey’s Roketsan.’’

Hospitals in U.S. South Run Low on Oxygen Amid Covid, Storm.

Continue reading “Turkey to Add More Advanced Drone to Fleet That Has Swung Wars” »

As first responders continue to embrace drones for emergency missions across the globe, a new map dashboard hopes to facilitate communication, coordination, and collaboration between various public safety agencies. This free, interactive global map and directory of emergency services drone programs is now home to over 900 agencies from more than 20 countries – and the numbers are rising steadily.

Not only is the initiative being welcomed by the community but it has also started showing results, too. As Charles Werner, director of DRONERESPONDERS, explains: