Canada’s big drone conference got underway today. The annual gathering of Unmanned Systems Canada / Systèmes Télécommandés Canada (USC-STC) is known for high-level sessions with great learning and some really great speakers. This year’s opening day was no exception.
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Ever hear of biomimicry? It’s when an inventor creates something that mimics a biological feature found in nature. Now, engineers at a European technical institute have done that with a drone.
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Ever wonder how you safely transport a huge rig over a long distance on water? The team transporting the drilling rig used a drone to ensure everything went well.
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Drones have been making their inroads into many different industries, one of which is the oil and gas industry. Today, BP said that the company is launching a new system of gas cloud imaging drones to monitor and help reduce methane emissions.
Last Friday, Bloomberg published an excellent article explaining how drones keep workers safe from dangerous work. In 2017 alone, 166 U.S. workers died in confined spaces and a staggering 887 were killed by falls. Many of these jobs can be done by drones and robots and thus keep workers away from dangerous situations. Robots and drones can safely go into confined spaces or fly up to dangerous heights to perform inspections that previously had to be done manually. Even though the number of commercial drones exploded to 277,000 in 2018, there are nowhere near enough of the unnamed aircraft to cover all the dangerous jobs in the country.
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After having used the DJI Matrice 210 for the first time in a training session earlier in the morning, the Halifax firefighters successfully used the unmanned aircraft in a search-and-rescue later that same day. On a dark and cold night in December the firefighters decided to send their new drone up one more time in their search for a missing person. The search had officially been called off, but the firefighters went ahead anyway. This time they used a different angle with their thermal camera and they found the semi-conscious man under a bridge. The man was picked up and rushed to the hospital. It was a turning point for the firefighters and they realized drones are much more than just a toy.
Landmines or anti-personnel explosives have been prohibited since 1977, however, so many of them have been used around the world that they continue to kill or injure around 10 people per day. The mines are hidden from sight and some of them, like the Russian-made Butterfly mine, are near impossible to detect with traditional mine-sweeping techniques. Two college students at New York’s Binghamton University, however, have found a solution to spot these landmines by using hacked consumer drones, such as a DJI Phantom, outfitted with infrared cameras.
Sulzer & Schmid is a Swiss tech company that uses the DJI Matrice 210 for a new drone-based wind turbine inspection platform. Their new 3DX HD product is based on the M210 drone and provides autonomous inspections at a lower cost compared with the company’s existing 3DXTM system, which is based on the DJI M600, according to the company.
Drones are being used in the aftermath of the Indonesia tsunami as dozens of people are still missing. According to authorities, first responders are working around the clock to reach six villages that have been cut off and are no longer accessible by road.
Engineers in Scotland used a drone to restore communications after a massive landslide cut off a remote Highland community. A road outside Kinloch Hourn was completely destroyed after a landslide dumped 9,000 tons of soil and rock on it from 2,500 ft.
Former Evernote executive and Sunflower Labs CEO Alex Pachikov showcases the Sunflower drone security system at his own house in San Carlos, California. The system consists of ‘Sunflowers’, a ‘Bee’ and a ‘Hive’. And as you might have guessed, the Bee is the drone in this home surveillance system. Even though there are some challenges to overcome before drones can be as part of fully autonomous home surveillance systems, it is good to see companies working on new drone applications. Let’s take a closer look at the Sunflower drone security system and how they plan to put drones to work.
We wrote about the Paradise Camp Fire before. In a matter of two days, 16 drone teams mapped the entire Paradise Camp Fire area. If that sounds impressive, it is because it is! Not only do you have the logistics of 16 drone teams to manage, think about the thousands and thousands of aerial photos that need to be collected, uploaded, processed, stitched and made available for the emergency responders and the general public. NBC has a great piece on this large-scale drone operation that also involved DroneDeploy and DJI. Jump in for more.
The Dutch, Boyan Slat started “The Ocean Cleanup” project a number of years ago as a teenager. His ambitious project aims to clean up the oceans from floating plastics and other debris by collecting it in a large floating catch system. A little over a month ago System 001, called Wilson, was deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The team uses drones as one of the tools to monitor Wilson’s performance and to conduct daily inspections. A great example of “Drones at Work.”
The San Fransisco based company Aerones is developing a drone to clean the windows of high rise buildings. They claim their drone can clean windows 20 times faster than humans all while being much safer. They believe the technology they have developed can also be used to help fight fires, as well as clean, de-ice and paint wind turbines.
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Oakland firefighters have been battling a massive fire overnight at a construction site where townhomes are being built. The fire was reported at 2 a.m. this morning. About 90 firefighters were on the scene as the massive fire ripped through the townhouse construction site located at West Grant and Filbert Street in Oakland, Calif. The Alameda County sheriff’s deputies brought a DJI Inspire 1 in to get footage of the fire. The drone equipped with a thermal camera shows exactly where the hotspots are.
This morning at around 3 am, we got an email from the FCC notifying us of the filing (FCC ID SS3-L1ZE1807) of the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Edition. Unfortunately, the filing does not contain a lot of test photos that might have given us some new information. The only photos that showed up are one from the drone and one from its label. DJI Airworks, an expo for commercial drone applications, is scheduled to take place at the end of October. It could well be that that event will include the launch or introduction of the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise.
In April 2017 a cow and calf moose were illegally shot near Alvena, Saskatchewan in Canada. To assist in the prosecution, Draganfly Innovations, and Saskatchewan Polytechnic were asked to create a 3D map of the conservation-related crime scene. With an Engage Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the work was started the same month. The team used a fixed-wing drone to create a detailed visual story that would help the prosecution of the illegal moose poacher.
