Aviation giant Airbus and two Israeli companies have been tasked with tracking down migrants trying to enter Europe via the Mediterranean with drones. The companies will be paid €100 million or about $118 million.
Expand Expanding Close
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has released its final report on the Airbus Zephyr drone that fell from the sky due to unstable weather near Wyndham Airport, Western Australia. The drone appears to have experienced a series of uncommanded turns, causing it to break apart mid-flight.
Expand Expanding Close
brigkAIR and Airbus have announced their Deep Drone Challenge for the public with up to €50,000 ($60,000) in prize money and professional mentorship. If you are at least 18 years old and live in Germany, you can attend whether you’re a student, professional, hobbyist, or inventor.
Expand Expanding Close
In an effort to combine the practicality of an airplane with the endurance of a satellite, Airbus has developed the Zephyr, a drone that flies at extremely high altitudes and is powered 100% by solar energy. There are two different variations of the aircraft: Zephyr S, a smaller aircraft that is already in production, and the Zephyr T, a larger scale version that is still in development.
Airbus, a French company, has its eyes set on the unmanned aerial vehicle market with their Zephyr high altitude drone. You may be familiar with Airbus as a company who develops passenger aircraft, like the A380 that was recently captured by a drone while taking off, commercial jets, and even helicopters. Their goal is entirely different with this project as the Zephyr S and Zephyr T offer a wide range of possibilities.
Check out this video! Somebody thought it was a great idea to fly his drone right next to an airport runway to record airplanes taking off. Not just any airplane. No, big ones. Like this Airbus A380 that can carry up to 525 people and that just took off from Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean. I mean, seriously…
Yesterday the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the 10 pilot programmes that have been approved under President Trump’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program (UAS IPP) in an effort to bring the country up to speed when it comes to drone experimentation. Yesterday we published the list of awardees and today we are reporting on the companies that made the list such as Airbus, Alphabet (Google), Apple, AT&T, Microsoft, FedEx, Uber, and others. As well as the ones that did not make the list, most notably Amazon and DJI.
This week at the MRO Americas, Airbus revealed their new Advanced Inspection Drone. This fully autonomous drone speeds up the visual inspection process of aircraft when they are parked inside a hangar. A laser-based obstacle detection sensor, flight planner software, and an Airbus’ aircraft inspection software analysis tool allows the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to perform the entire inspection automatically. This new drone-based process reduces the aircraft downtime drastically, and it improves the quality of the inspection itself.
Lawmakers in Berlin could soon approve the deployment of armed drone for the Bundeswehr. German defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen is to forward a €25 million EUR ($30.7 million USD) placeholder petition to the defense committees for a program to lease a number of Heron-TP drones from Israel. The entire contract is valued at around €1 billion EUR.
Singapore wants in on the rapidly developing drone industry. The areas of interest are the driverless cars, delivery drone, and drone-taxis. Like Dubai, Singapore is interested in transforming the way good and products are moving around the city. Airbus is also testing drone-taxis, as we reported on before.
BBC News just reported that an Airbus 319 narrowly missed a large drone while approaching Gatwick Airport. A UK Airprox Board report revealed that 130 lives were at risk when a large diameter drone passed directly over the wing, in between the wingtip and the fuselage. An “airprox” is when distances between aircraft are seen to compromise safety. The incident happened on July 9th when a drone was “flown into conflict” with the Airbus 319. According to the report, there had been a high chance of collision.
CityAirbus, chief engineer Marius Bebesel confirmed this week that Airbus expects to have the flying taxi in the air in 2018, after successfully completing ground tests of the electric power system that they will use to propel the vehicle through the air.