Miscellaneous

[Airicist]

The top 5 best drones available today

Published on Aug 15, 2016

There are lot of drones out there and picking one can be difficult. These are the ones that stand out in the crowd.

[Airicist]

Robot Aircraft of the Future - The Rise of the Unmanned Planes

Published on Aug 16, 2016

This NASA aircraft video is structured around the experimental project to design a revolutionary robot aircraft or unmanned aircraft which could fly itself using state of the art computer controls and programming while integrating itself into the commercial air space structure safely. The X-47B is a good example of this which will lead us further into interstellar space.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, as an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard, either under remote control by a human operator, or fully or intermittently autonomously, by on-board computers.

Control systems for UAVs are very different than manned craft. For remote human control, a camera and video link almost always replace the cockpit windows; radio-transmitted digital commands replace physical cockpit controls. Autopilot software is used on both manned and unmanned aircraft, with varying feature sets.

Compared to manned aircraft, unmanned aircraft UAVs originated mostly in government applications such as the X-47B, although their use is expanding in commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications, such as policing and surveillance, aerial photography, agriculture and drone racing. Civilian drones now vastly outnumber government drones, with estimates of over a million sold by 2015, according to National Airspace System (NAS ) data.

[Airicist]

Drones: The difference between professional and toy flying machines

Published on Aug 22, 2016

Drones are all over the market, from high-end ones all the way down to cheaper toys that happen to fly. CNET's resident drone expert Joshua Goldman talks with Jeff Bakalar about the differences between these bigger and smaller drones, and Mike Sorrentino pulls in your drone questions in this Open_Tab excerpt. Plus, we fly a drone live in the studio, which goes about as unpredictably as it sounds.

[Airicist]

1000W LED on a DRONE - RCTESTFLIGHT

Published on Oct 15, 2016

Carrying the old 1000W LED light bar underneath the Freefly Alta.

Filmed by:
Henning Sandstrom
Mike Hagadorn
Cody Wratten
John Lillquist
Deniz Ozgoren
Colter Merritt

[Airicist]

RI Seminar: Kostas Alexis : Autonomous exploration and inspection using aerial robots

Streamed live October 28, 2016

Kostas Alexis
Assistant Professor, University of Nevada, Reno

October 28, 2016

Autonomous Exploration and Inspection using Aerial Robots

Abstract
The capacity of aerial robots to autonomously explore, inspect and map their environment is key to many applications. This talk will overview and discuss a set of new -and in their majority open sourced and experimentally verified- sampling-based strategies that break new ground on how a robot can efficiently inspect a structure for which a prior model exists, how to explore unknown environments, and how to actively combine the planning and perception loops to achieve autonomous exploration with maintained levels of 3D mapping fidelity. In particular, we will detail recent developments in the field of active perception and belief-space planning for autonomous exploration. Finally, an overview of further research activities on aerial robotics, including solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles and aerial manipulators will be provided.

Speaker Biography
Kostas Alexis obtained his Ph.D. in the field of aerial robotics control and collaboration from the University of Patras, Greece in 2011. His Ph.D. research was supported by the Greek national-European Commission Excellence scholarship. After successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis, he was a awarded a Swiss Government fellowship and moved to Switzerland and ETH Zurich. From 2011 to June 2015 he held the position of senior researcher at the Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, leading the lab efforts in the fields of control and path planning for advanced navigational and operational autonomy. His research interests lie in the fields of control, navigation, optimization and path-planning focusing on aerial robotic systems with multiple and hybrid configurations. He is the author or co-author of more than 50 scientific publications and has received several best paper awards and distinctions, including the IET Control Theory & Applications Premium Award 2014. Furthermore, together with his collaborators, they have achieved world records in the field of solar-powered flight endurance. Kostas Alexis has participated in and organized several large-scale multi-million dollar research projects with broad international involvement and collaboration. In July 2015, Kostas moved to the University of Nevada, Reno with the goal to dedicate his efforts towards establishing true autonomy for aerial and other kinds of robotics.

[Airicist]

How many quadcopters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Published on Oct 23, 2016

We decided to screw in a lightbulb using a quadcopter, we spent a whole day trying with a Eachine E30W and failed every time. Next time we tried with a Syma X5C-1 and it took about 10 minutes to get it right...

[Airicist]

Fly the stranger skies with these 12 oddball drones

Published on Nov 10, 2016

Quadcopters and Unmanned aerial vehicles come in all shapes and sizes these days. Here's a look at some of the oddballs from the bunch. It's a bird, it's a plane, It's R2-D2?

[Airicist]

Top 5 disturbing drone facts?

Published on Dec 16, 2016

Depending on which ones you are talking about, drones are either super fun or super deadly. Drone strikes, right? But while military drones like the Predator drone prowl skies with alarming frequency, consumer UAV like the parrot drone are increasing in popularity, and police are using them for surveillance, bringing up legal issues along the way. And did we mention that drone pizza delivery is a thing? On this episode of Top 5 Facts, we share the most surprising and interesting facts we could find about drones.

[Airicist]

AURORA - Winter Bird

Published on Dec 20, 2016

"Sometimes I fear our technological progress will slowly take over. We meet people through texts and screens. Is it setting us free? Or are we slowly wrapping ourselves in, depending too much on it? the fall is bigger when our hopes are not realistic, not human. What has no heart can't give us love and true happiness."

Director - Simon Thirlaway
Line Producer - Trevor Herrick
Executive Producer - Megan Kelly
Technical Director - Sam Ewen
Choreographer - Kiesha Lalama
Editor - Eric Harnden

Produced in partnership with YouTube Music.
Special thanks to Carnegie Mellon University School of Art and Robotics Institute.

Behind the scenes of a flying robot-built cocoon

Published on Dec 20, 2016

The Creators Project goes behind the scenes with Norwegian musical artist Aurora, director Simon Thirlaway, and Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Laboratory team on the music video shoot for "Winter Bird," featuring the artist inside a large-scale "cocoon" constructed with choreographed flying robots carrying gauzy fabric and LED lights. Aurora explains how her fascination with the intersection of nature and technology is realized through this organic structure built through robotic programming, and how the video's theme also symbolizes her own artistic development. We also get first hand insight into how Thirlaway, Carnegie Mellon's Ali Momeni, and their respective crews teamed up and were pushed technologically to bring Aurora's cinematic and ethereal vision to life.

[Airicist]

Inside the University of North Dakota's drone piloting program

Published on Jan 25, 2017

The University of North Dakota is home to the first unmanned aircraft systems degree on the collegiate level. The school is already known for its aerospace program, where it trains commercial pilots, so it makes sense to extend that knowledge to unmanned aircraft. The demand for commercial drone pilots is growing in the agriculture and energy sectors. TechCrunch visited the UND campus to learn more.