Meet ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’
The drone fleet used by SpaceX to catch falling rockets now has a third autonomous ship, whimsically called “A Shortfall of Gravitas.”
Founder Elon Musk unveiled the newest floating rocket landing pad on Twitter Friday (July 9) along with a dramatic video from a flying drone circling the ship.
Planetary scientists estimate that each year, about 500 meteorites survive the fiery trip through Earth’s atmosphere and fall to our planet’s surface. Most are quite small, and less than 2% of them are ever recovered. While the majority of rocks from space may not be recoverable due to ending up in oceans or remote, inaccessible areas, other meteorite falls are just not witnessed or known about.
But new technology has upped the number known falls in recent years. Doppler radar has detected meteorite falls, as well as all-sky camera networks specifically on the lookout for meteors. Additionally, increased use of dashcams and security cameras have allowed for more serendipitous sightings and data on fireballs and potential meteorite falls.
At Stellantis’ EV Day, Jeep detailed a range of wild future tech, including off-road self-driving, vehicle-to-vehicle charging and follow-me drones.
As Ross Embleton, the guy who designed Mavic 2 Drone Cage for Heliguy, points out:
Cages are becoming an incredibly important drone accessory, helping to increase flight safety and drone protection. Our customers wanted an affordable, collision-proof cage for Mavic 2 drones; a series that is reliable, popular, lightweight, and small enough to carry out internal inspections. The cage opens new doors for enterprise users. It allows them to operate safely and capture quality data, with greater, 360-degree protection.
London Fire Brigade (LFB), one of the largest firefighting and rescue organizations in the world, has endorsed the Mavic 2 Drone Cage, saying it makes “previously impossible operations possible.”
During operations in Gaza in mid-May, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used a swarm of small drones to locate, identify and attack Hamas militants. This is thought to be the first time a drone swarm has been used in combat.
Municipalities regularly have to check for pollution in local waterways, often utilizing crews of workers in boats. The new Nixie system is intended to make things much quicker, simpler and ultimately cheaper, using a water-sampling drone instead.
Developed by New York-based startup Reign Maker, the hardware end of the setup consists of the pole-like Nixie Base sampling device, that has a docking mechanism at the top and a 500-ml (16.9-oz) water collection bottle in a lockable holder at the bottom. It’s designed to work with a client-supplied and-operated DJI Matrice 600 or Matrice 300 RTK multicopter drone – for an extra fee, Reign Maker will provide a pilot and drone.
In either scenario, the drone’s operator begins by hovering the copter over another shore-based worker, who attaches the Base to the undercarriage of the unmodified aircraft. Attaching it involves simply pulling down on a lever at the bottom of the Base to open its docking mechanism, making sure that the mechanism is properly engaged with the drone, then releasing the lever to close and secure it.
After the program was first revealed in 2019, the Air Force’s then-Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper stated he wanted to see operational demonstrations within two years. The latest test flight of the Skyborg-equipped Avenger shows the service has clearly hit that benchmark.
The General Atomics Avenger was used in experiments with another autonomy system in 2020, developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program that sought to develop drones that could demonstrate “collaborative autonomy,” or the ability to work cooperatively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDOt91JqqhM
Video from PRO ROBOTS. 😃
-robot avatars.
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A team of researchers working at Johannes Kepler University has developed an autonomous drone with a new type of technology to improve search-and-rescue efforts. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes their drone modifications. Andreas Birk with Jacobs University Bremen has published a Focus piece in the same journal issue outlining the work by the team in Austria.
Finding people lost (or hiding) in the forest is difficult because of the tree cover. People in planes and helicopters have difficulty seeing through the canopy to the ground below, where people might be walking or even laying down. The same problem exists for thermal applications—heat sensors cannot pick up readings adequately through the canopy. Efforts have been made to add drones to search-and–rescue operations, but they suffer from the same problems because they are remotely controlled by pilots using them to search the ground below. In this new effort, the researchers have added new technology that both helps to see through the tree canopy and to highlight people that might be under it.
