Category: drones

By J. Fingas

Drone shows are quickly becoming the tool of choice for people and companies that want to grab your attention, and Genesis knows that all too well. The Hyundai-owned car brand marked its entrance into China by breaking the Guinness World Record for the most Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the air at the same time, using 3,281 drones to display its logo and otherwise advertise over Shanghai on March 29th.

It’s a significant improvement over the previous record holder, Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology. The company flew ‘just’ 3,051 drones in September 2020. That, in turn, smashed a record set by a 2,200-drone performance in Russia just days earlier. Intel, which has a reputation for drone light shows, last claimed the record with 2,066 drones flying over Folsom, California in July 2018.

Continue reading… “Genesis broke a world record for the most drones in the sky”

Seaplane Hong Kong is looking to the future as it one day aims to transport passengers around the country via drones for as little as $25. The goal is to make hiring a transport drone as easy and painless to do as ordering a car from a ride-sharing service today.

The company hopes to have the drones up and fly before the end of the year, depending on regulatory approval. It isn’t clear what drone the company will be using now, but it seems likely that it will be using EHang’s 216 passenger drone.

The drone transport will allow flights from Hong Kong Central to Kwun Tong and TKO (Tseung Kwan O), cutting down the travel time from 18 minutes to just 6 minutes, a time difference that doesn’t seem a lot, but for future flights that are farther, the time difference will increase.

Continue reading… “Hong Kong airline aims to transport passengers for $25, using drones”

Technology eliminates the need to use chemicals to kill pests

By MIKE CORDER | The Associated Press

A moth-killing drone hovers over crops in a green house in Monster, Netherlands, on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021. A Dutch startup is using drones to kill moths in midair as a way of protecting valuable crops in greenhouses that are damaged by caterpillars.

MONSTER, NETHERLANDS — Dutch cress grower Rob Baan has enlisted high-tech helpers to tackle a pest in his greenhouses: palm-sized drones seek and destroy moths that produce caterpillars that can chew up his crops.

“I have unique products where you don’t get certification to spray chemicals and I don’t want it,” Baan said in an interview in a greenhouse bathed in the pink glow of LED lights that help his seedlings grow. His company, Koppert Cress, exports aromatic seedlings, plants and flowers to top-end restaurants around the world.

Continue reading… “Drones vs. hungry moths: Dutch use hi-tech to protect crops”

By Park Eel-kyung & Kim Tae-gyu, UPI News Korea

SEOUL, March 26 (UPI) — Samsung Electronics has launched drone delivery service of smartphones and other digital gadgets within minutes of an order in Ireland.

The company said Wednesday it launched the new service this week in Oranmore, some 125 miles west of Dublin, through a partnership with Ireland’s Manna Drone Delivery.

When customers make an online order via Samsung’s Irish website, a drone will fly at a speed of 35 mph to reach homes in Oranmore within three minutes, according to Samsung.

Available through the service are such products as the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the Galaxy Buds Pro, the Galaxy Tab S7, the Galaxy Watch 3 and Galaxy A series phones.

Samsung aims to expand the service across Ireland for now.

Continue reading… “Samsung Electronics launches drone deliveries in Ireland”

One of Zipline’s drones. 

By Grace Dean 

• Zipline has started delivering coronavirus vaccines with drone in Ghana.
• This tackles one of the biggest problems with the rollout – distributing doses in poorer countries.
• Zipline has delivered medical supplies by drone since 2016, and works with Walmart and Novant Health.

Ghana has become the first country to launch a nationwide program to deliver coronavirus vaccines with drones.

Zipline started delivering the shots on Tuesday as part of the WHO’s first shipment of vaccines through COVAX, its program that aims to provide poorer countries with enough doses to cover 20% of their population.

Zipline, a San Francisco startup, has been delivering medical supplies including blood, personal protective equipment, and vaccines since 2016 using patented, autonomous drones.

Doctors can use Zipline’s app to place orders and track shipments.

Continue reading… “Ghana is using drones to deliver coronavirus vaccines to rural communities”

Last week Louisiana-based shipbuilder Metal Shark announced that the U.S. Marine Corps had selected them to develop a Long Range Unmanned Surface Vessel (LRUSV), an 11-meter robot boat capable of operating autonomously and launching loitering munitions to attack targets at sea and on land. The unmanned boat is just the latest of a series of new platforms for launching drone swarms.

“This tiered, scalable weapons system will provide the ability to accurately track and destroy targets at range throughout the battlespace,” according to Metal Shark’s press release.

Loitering munitions, otherwise known as kamikaze drones, differ from other weapons in being relatively slow but able to patrol an area for a prolonged period looking for targets before identifying, selecting and attacking them.

Continue reading… “Robot Motherships To Launch Drone Swarms From Sea, Underwater, Air And Near-Space”

A fleet of drones could create a quantum network by transmitting quantum particles among the fleet’s formation and relaying the particles to ground stations at various locations within a city (illustrated).XIAO-HUI TIAN, HUA-YING LIU AND ZHENDA XIE

By Emily Conover

The quantum internet may be coming to you via drone.

Scientists have now used drones to transmit particles of light, or photons, that share the quantum linkage called entanglement. The photons were sent to two locations a kilometer apart, researchers from Nanjing University in China report in a study to appear in Physical Review Letters.

Entangled quantum particles can retain their interconnected properties even when separated by long distances. Such counterintuitive behavior can be harnessed to allow new types of communication. Eventually, scientists aim to build a global quantum internet that relies on transmitting quantum particles to enable ultrasecure communications by using the particles to create secret codes to encrypt messages. A quantum internet could also allow distant quantum computers to work together, or perform experiments that test the limits of quantum physics.

Continue reading… “Drones could help create a quantum internet”