NASA picks research teams to tackle advances in drone, self-driving car tech


The three chosen research teams will perform feasibility studies on projects aimed at advancing autonomous systems in self-driving cars and drones.

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NASA has selected a trio of research teams to perform feasibility studies on projects aimed at advancing autonomous systems in self-driving cars and drones.

The research will span three key areas of autonomous technology, including certification of self-driving cars and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS); the development of new methods to verify whether remote-piloted drones are fit to fly before each flight; and how to use quantum computing and communication tech to create a jam-free network that can support hundreds of thousands of drones flying each day.

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NASA said the studies are expected to take between 24 and to 30 months to complete.

“Our idea is to invest a very modest amount of time and money into new technologies that are ambitious and potentially transformative,” said Richard Barhydt, NASA’s acting director of the Transformative Aeronautics Concepts program.

“They may or may not work, but we won’t know unless we try.”

NASA’s targeted selection of the research teams shows how the organization is trying to tackle the technology segments in need of refinement in order to make autonomous systems operate at scale. The organization has also become aggressive in its push for technological advances in drone systems and finding ways to use them for Mars exploration.

For instance, NASA’s Mars Electric Reusable Flyer project is using technology from autonomous robots and self-driving vehicles to develop visual odometry algorithms and Simultaneous Linearization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms that will allow drones to navigate and recharge autonomously in the often unpredictable conditions on Mars.

Amazon Makes Its First Air Delivery Through Drone


Today, everything is a stone’s throw away. From our pizzas to our headphones, we have our necessities at our doorsteps in no time. As if that wasn’t enough, Amazon has now delivered a package by a drone, just 13 minutes after the order was placed. The order, an Amazon Fire TV Box and a bag of popcorn, was delivered to a customer named Richard B near Cambridge, England.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and chief executive, proudly shared the news on Twitter:

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First-ever customer delivery is in the books. 13 min—click to delivery. Check out the video: http://amzn.to/primeair 

The delivery was done in the rural countryside near Cambridge, an area that has been authorized for drone test flights by British aviation.

Amazon published a video explaining how the fully autonomous delivery was made, without any human pilot.

The use of drones and autonomous machines is being eyed by companies like Amazon as a great way to not only expand their user base and increase efficiency but to also lower the cost of delivery of small packages. Amazon Prime Air aims at speedy delivery of packages through unmanned aerial vehicles.

Drone deliveries have been made by companies like Flirtey and Project Wing in the past, and it remains to be seen how effective the system proves to be, considering the vehicles are unmanned.

Twitterati had its doubts though: 

@ivanandriollo @JeffBezos …alternatively, plot a path that avoids dangerous or sensitive areas? 😛 Silly thing to get worked up about

@stroughtonsmith @JeffBezos unfortunately drones are the worst idea of the millennium. They will break and kill people. Software is buggy.

@stroughtonsmith @JeffBezos unfortunately drones are the worst idea of the millennium. They will break and kill people. Software is buggy.

@stroughtonsmith @JeffBezos as soon as they proliferate, a sudden hailstorm would bring them down in droves. The tech is nowhere near there!

That Crazy People-Carrying Drone Is About to Start Testing


EHang signed a deal with Nevada to develop its passenger-carrying 184 drone in the state. Before testing starts later this year, here’s what you need to know about the flying taxi of the future.

Not so long ago, the surest sign that you are extremely rich and/or a supervillain was access to a helicopter. Are you the type to leave a meeting and head not to the lobby but to the roof? Is there a chopper bearing your name or logo waiting to whisk you away to your next corporate merger? Do you have a subscription to Blade for your fortnightly jaunts to the Hamptons? Congratulations, you’re in the club.

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That club is about to get a little bigger.

Today at CES in Las Vegas, EHang announced what it hopes will become the next big thing in bigwig tech: a passenger-ready drone that will fly you around the city at the touch of a button in its smartphone app. The autonomous ‘copter, which EHang calls 184 and says will cost between $200,000 and $300,000, can carry passengers of up to about 260 pounds for 23 minutes on a single charge.

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Here’s how it’s supposed to work: You get in the 440-pound 184, and bring up the large touchscreen inside the one-person-only cockpit. Enjoy the air conditioning and Wi-Fi inside, plug your destination into Google Maps, and off you go. “It’s a fully autonomous flying machine,” says CFO Shang Hsiao, but that’s only partly true. EHang is also planning to set up what it calls “command centers” around the world, a decidedly human group of people who will act as a mix of air-traffic-control and a failsafe. In case, you know, your autonomous flying drone, which has no controls for you to touch whatsoever, stops doing its job. Ideally, though, all the command centers will do is watch. “We will monitor, it’s a whole process, all the way from the takeoff to the landing,” says Hsiao. “They don’t need to do anything at all.”

The Chinese company is best known for the Ghost Drone, a (much smaller) quadcopter that comes with head-tracking VR goggles and an app that lets you tilt your phone to control your drone. The company’s goal has always been to make drones ridiculously easy to fly, which it has always—and somewhat cryptically—taken care to note is a technology that can be applied more widely than consumer drones.

It seems like a logical evolution, in a way: a greener, smaller, automated tool for flying the people who need and can afford it more efficiently to where they’re going. But the list of problems ahead of EHang is long, and getting longer. Before it can launch in the US, EHang needs to work with the FAA. It’ll have to work with equivalent agencies in every other country, most of which have no regulations for anything remotely like the 184, and have far more consumer-focused problems to deal with at the moment. Then they’ll have to build command centers everywhere. Then they’ll have to figure out who’s going to actually buy the 184.

Still, EHang presses on: “After we launch it at CES,” Hsiao says, “the goal is to do the commercialization within three to four months.” Hsiao names hospitals, coast-to-island transit, and even taxi services as potential clients. They’ll launch first in China, along with (it hopes) the US, New Zealand, and some other countries in Europe. When I told Hsiao I was surprised Dubai wasn’t on the list, he laughs. “A lot of people suggest Dubai. And maybe we’ll go over there!” Wherever there are rich people with somewhere to go and maybe a little bit of a danger streak, EHang will be there. Maybe.

This unique drone can fly indefinitely and doesn’t need to land


Perpetual eyes in the sky.

If you’ve ever had a bit of a play with a consumer drone unit you’ll know that their power supplies don’t necessarily last all that long. After spending some time in the air, you need to keep an eye on your device’s battery levels (in addition to watching out for trees) to make sure things don’t come to an abrupt, ground-smacking end.

The PARC (Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications) from drone-maker CyPhy Works, doesn’t suffer that particular shortcoming, however. This uniquely powered drone can stay in the air indefinitely (although 100 hours is the maximum recommended operating time) thanks to its proprietary microfilament system, which is effectively a specialised power cord that extends from the ground to the airborne unit.

“It’s basically a robot with unlimited time-of-flight,” said Helen Greiner, the founder of CyPhy Works, speaking this week at the EmTech 2015 conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as reported by Will Knight at MIT Technology Review. “You send it up and it stays there.”

While the microfilament system means the drone is pretty much tethered in one location, for its intended use case that’s not so much of a problem: unlike free-ranging long-distance drones, the PARC is primarily designed as a long-term surveillance unit and has been used by the US military for this very purpose, where it can keep an eye over ground bases or monitor movement from afar.

This week however CyPhy Works announced it had received clearance from the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) allowing its customers to fly the device for commercial purposes. So, while you won’t see Amazon or Google using the PARC to deliver packages any time soon – the latter said recently it intends to begin drone deliveries as soon as 2017 – it’s quite possible you might see the unit operating for other sorts of outdoor surveillance and security tasks.

We can imagine TV networks would love the idea of a long-endurance drone that can monitor and film extraordinary incidents for hours or days on end without needing to land and swap batteries. Or building managers might be attracted to having some eyes in the sky for value-added security to complement ground-level cameras and security systems.

In addition to carrying electricity up to the drone to keep it operational in the air, the microfilament cable also acts as a data cable, ensuring that the PARC’s surveillance recordings (high-definition video, also recordable in night-vision mode) can securely and unhackably make it down to its ground level control station – not that the independent drone needs piloting (it’s fully self-sufficient in the air up to an altitude of 150 metres).

But what if the cable comes lose, severing the PARC’s power supply? Fortunately the unit comes equipped with an internal battery for just these very emergencies, meaning even if the drone gets unplugged, it can safely fly down to make an independent landing.

Switzerland begins postal delivery by drone


http://m.economictimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/switzerland-begins-postal-delivery-by-drone/slideshow/47998181.cms?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ETFBMain

Artificial bee brain used for vision system of a drone .


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The Green Brain Project is located in Sheffield, England, and it has one key focus: to simulate a functioning honeybee brain in software. Using a mix of neuroscience modeling, decision theory, parallel computing, and robotics, they are working towards that goal. So far, they’ve got the vision and olfactory (sensory) systems working in basic form, and they’ve already been hooked up to a drone.

Recreating an entire brain, however simple, is a massive undertaking and will take many years to achieve. But as different parts of the brain come online they can be put to good use with surprisingly positive results. In the case of this drone, the artificial bee brain’s vision was used to allow the drone to see. With the software running on the drone, and cameras used as eyes, it was able to fly down a corridor successfully.

Of course, even this vision system is in the early stages of development. It can currently detect motion but not colors or shapes–those will come in time.

As the bee brain development continues, more will be learned about the best ways to create an artificial brain while unlocking new functionality. The ultimate goal at The Green Brain Project is a fully functioning bee brain that can’t be told apart from the real thing. After that, there’s nothing to stop it being uploaded to a tiny drone that actually carries out the same daily duties of a real honeybee. Of course, for that to happen robot development has got to progress a few more generations, too.

When we say that robots will one day take over the world we usually link it to some sort of apocalypse. However, with bee numbers on the decline and their function in nature being so vital, millions of drone bees may actually be a vital part of a future with humans still in it.

Watch the video. URL: https://youtu.be/_pdVMjOx_cI