Thứ Ba, 11 tháng 10, 2016
The southern right whale was given its name because tragically, it was the "right" whale for whaling. The animals tended to swim close to shore, making them easy marks for whalers who hunted them to the brink of extinction. Thanks to drones, researchers are helping the southern right whale make a comeback while keeping an eye on the effects of climate change. Researchers from Murdoch University, supported by WWF Australia, are monitoring the whales as they breed in the Great Australian Bight in the country's south. Fredrik Christiansen, a researcher at Murdoch University, told Mashable southern right whale populations are recovering, albeit slowly. In Australia, they are thought to number only around 3,500. Bella's calf on July 3 (top) and September 4 (bottom). The calf grew 1.83 metres (6 foot) in length in two months. Image: FREDRIK CHRISTIANSEN/MURDOCH UNIVERSITY "Although the humpback was hunted almost as much, the humpbacks are 10 times as many now as the southern right whale," he said. "They are still endangered. There are still populations in the North Atlantic where they are critically endangered." When the whales visit Australia, they typically breed and aggregate along the south coast of the country from late May to late October. That gives scientists the opportunity to use drones to monitor their health. Christiansen said the technology has proved invaluable. "To get this kind of information before you would need a helicopter or a plane — it was expensive, noisy and involved some risk for the operator," he added. The team fly DJI Inspire 1 Pro drones off the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight with the permission of the Aboriginal Lands Trust, allowing them to minimise disturbance to the animals while getting high resolution images and measurements. After months of monitoring, the team found female southern right whales lose an extraordinary amount of body mass while feeding and fattening their calves. Some females lose more than half a metre in width roughly, Christiansen explained, while the calves can grow more than two metres (seven foot) in length. "When the whales leave, the females look quite emaciated," he said. "There is so much energy being transferred between the female and the calves, especially when they're not feeding." During this time, the mother whales rely entirely on their fat stores. Maybeline and her calf on July 2 (top) and August 31 (bottom). Maybeline lost 40 cm (16 inches) in width while her calf gained 1.53 metres (5 foot) in length. Image: FREDRIK CHRISTIANSEN/MURDOCH UNIVERSITY Ultimately, the team hope to discover how climate change will affect the whales. For example, how krill production in their Antarctic feeding ground — the abundance of which will likely be affected by the rise in sea temperature and receding sea ice — will affect their condition once they arrive in Australia. Monitoring these factors can tell scientists about the probability of the whales surviving and reproducing. Southern right whales only calve every three to four years. "We can also compare our population to other populations to see if the Australian population is doing better," he added. Bella on July 3 (top) and September 4 (bottom). She lost 31 centimetres (12 inches) in width in 63 days. Image: FREDRIK CHRISTIANSEN/MURDOCH UNIVERSITY To continue the work, the WWF is campaigning to raise additional funds. "This [drone] technology is getting picked up all over the world by whale monitoring groups," Christiansen said. "In a few years, we're going to know the condition of most baleen whale populations around the world."
Thứ Hai, 8 tháng 8, 2016
As countries and companies plan for a future filled with drones, safety and efficiency have become top concerns. A London-based startup hopes to make the skies safer and clearer for everyone. It's called Flock, and it uses AI to analyze data, sourced from urban environments, that allows it to assess risk for drone flights. Flock works by licensing data about the position of buildings, people and cars in cities, in addition to weather conditions. Then it enters that into its risk assessment platform, which can calculate whether it's safe or not to fly. Its target market right now is mostly limited to insurance companies, whom Flock wants to help set premiums. The company is also marketing itself to drone operators. In the future, Flock is hoping to use its AI algorithms to predict which routes and times would have the least risk, allowing prescheduled flights and schedules. Even better, the more the AI gets a feel for patterns in the urban data, the more likely Flock will be able to offer real-time risk analysis. “The idea is to have a robust trend analysis built in to the system so we can analyze historic data on all the data sources that we collect over a given period of time, and then build up a really good understanding of how cities move generally, how cities breathe, and how populations and traffic conditions change over time,” Ed Leon Klinger, CEO and co-founder of Flock, told TechCrunch. From there, it can partner with insurers and drone companies to test its platform. Flock is hoping to have a minimum viable product developed within six months. The company has been funded so far with some grants from Innovate UK in addition to bootstrapping. At this time, Flock's major competitor is AirMap, based in Santa Monica, California, which also offers airspace data for drones, and already has an iOS and Web app. It has $15 million in backing from venture capitalists. Klinger, however, said that the company is different in that it's not focusing on the development of its real-time data, but is rather focusing on "static regulation." A sample search with filters on Airmap's web app Image: airmap The success of Flock, being based in the UK, where Amazon recently announced it would test its drone delivery program, could be considered an indicator of the drone market's future. The U.S., for example, is notorious for regulations that make it harder to test drones. Then again, some analysts believe that starting in the UK is just a way to test on a small scale for better footing in larger markets.
Thứ Sáu, 22 tháng 7, 2016
More Star Wars drones are coming. Air Hogs's Millennium Falcon drone was pretty sweet, but undeniably... uh... foamy. (It is designed to be kid safe after all). At Star Wars Celebration in London last week, Propel announced its own lineup of drones based off of vehicles from the Star Wars universe and they look AH-MAZE-ING. Not only are they fast drones, but they also shoot lasers for real aerial battles with each other. Unreal. Four highly detailed (hand-painted) drones were shown off, including an X-Wing, Millennium Falcon, TIE Fighter and a 74-Z speeder bike used by the Imperial Army during the Battle of Endor. Image: propel Image: PROPEL Image: PROPEL Image: PROPEL The drones sport four propellers positioned below the body as opposed to above. Propel says the different placement of the blades allows them to appear invisible in the air, and also helps create more downward thrust that allows them to max out at speeds of 40 mph. The Millennium Falcon drone can reportedly fly at 50 mph — because it has to be the fastest if it's going to make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. As mentioned earlier, the drones can fire lasers, and up to 24 drones can dogfight in the air with each other. Additionally, the drones can perform mid-air stunts like backflips and 360-degree rotations with a single button push on the remote control. Fans can pre-order the drones from Propel's website for shipping by the end of the year. North Americans will have to wait a little longer, though, as it's not available in the region yet. The drones will cost $200-$300 depending on the model and only 10,000-15,000 units per model will be produced, according to IGN. You can find more hands-on photos of the drones on Propel's Facebook page here. Image: propel Image: PROPEL Image: propel Image: Propel Image: Propel Image: Propel
Thứ Năm, 7 tháng 7, 2016
Flying a drone is tricky business. The prosumer models are powerful, fast and can get into trouble in a hurry if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why smart, logical design and intuitive controls are so important in the drone game. It’s also where the Typhoon H from Yuneec partially stumbles. Don’t get me wrong, the $1,299, six-rotor drone is expertly designed. It has a third more rotors than, say, the DJI Phantom 4 and, unlike virtually every other drone I’ve tested, folds up for relatively easy transport: the rotor arms fold down to the body when not in flight. The landing gear can also retract to give the Typhoon H’s HD gimbal camera an unobstructed 360-degree view. In addition, the Yuneec H’s gray body is a rugged mix of ABS plastic and carbon fiber. The Yuneec Typhoon H drone ships with this Ground Station remote control that features a built-in, 7-in. screen. Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable The Yuneec Typhoon H is also an intelligent drone, more or less matching DJI on autonomous flight control features, including built-in obstacle avoidance and the ability to track objects on its 4K camera. It is paired, though, with one of the more confusing remote controls, called a ground station, I’ve encountered in some time. Like the DJI Phantom 4, Yuneec’s Typhoon H arrives in a rather large gray foam box. Lacking a handle, it doesn’t quite qualify as a carrying case (you can buy a drone backpack separately). Inside is the drone, with all its rotors folded down, the sizable remote control (the ST16 Ground Station), a bag of a dozen propellers, a large drone battery, AC/DC charger with cables for both the drone and remote, a sunshade for the remote’s 7-inch screen, a neck strap to hold the remote and a 16GB micro SD card and SD card-sized micro SD card adapter. Setup is easy. The drone’s rotor arms fold up and snap smartly into place. Each propeller blade attaches bayonet-style to each rotor. They’re color-coded to matching rotor arms and they release with the press of a button in the center of the rotor and a quick turn in the opposite direction. The Yuneec Typhoon H has retractable landing gear and six rotors. Yuneec claims it can keep flying even if one of the propellers fails Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable The brick-like battery slides neatly into the Yuneec Typhoon H body. It actually has a retractable handle that makes it easy to pull out when it’s time to recharge. Both the remote and drone battery take about 2.5 hours to fully charge. Before my first test-flight, I registered the drone with the FAA ($5) and affixed the registration number to the battery before sliding it back into the Typhoon H. Before we get to flying, it's worth spending some time talking about the remote control or, as Yuneec calls it, the Ground Station. Yuneec Typhoon H Ground Station is large and full of controls. If the sun is too bright to see the screen, you can use the included, detachable shade. I tried it, but had trouble keeping it on. Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable Roughly a foot wide by 8 inches long and an inch or so deep, the Ground Station is a handful (hence the strap for comfort). Unlike the DJI Phantom 4, which uses a much smaller and lighter remote that’s paired with your iPad or iPhone running DJI flight software, Yuneec’s Ground station is an all-in-one device. The centerpiece is a 7-inch screen running Yuneec’s Android-based ground control interface, which offers real-time updates on altitude GPS and satellite availability, current position, altitude, speed, distance from pilot and photography presets. It’s also where you access most of the drone's deeper settings and more powerful modes. Yuneec Typhoon H's Ground Station offers a ton of precision drone control, but it can also be confusing. Plus. the switches are a little too close to the joysticks. Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable The rest of the Ground Station is festooned with physical buttons, switches and dials, a number of them duplicating the on-screen software options. On the remote’s face are a pair of easy-to-reach joysticks, four switches (each with between two and three options), a pair of dials, buttons for photos and videos, two D-pads and a power slider button. On the top edge are the antennas, another switch and a red button that turns out to be one of the most important buttons of all: it’s for taking off. Every one of these buttons has a purpose, but there’s little rhyme or reason to their locations. Why, for example, is the critical launch button on the top edge, out of easy reach? Why does the toggle that lets you switch between Smart and the more challenging Angle mode also include Home? Shouldn’t the return home button be its own thing, as it is with the DJI remote? What’s worse is that those toggles are so close to the joysticks that I accidentally hit the switches on multiple occasions. Yes, there are a lot of controls on this Ground Station. Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable There are also controls on the underside of the remote (this is similar to the DJI Phantom), though I question why one that controls the overall speed of flight and response should be a control you can’t eyeball to quickly know if you’re flying closer to Turtle or Rabbit speed (those are Yuneec’s settings definitions, not mine). I wish I could say the software interface does a better job of clarifying controls, but nothing felt obvious. And when I wanted to test Advanced features, I could find no physical switch on the remote or a top-level one on the software interface. It was hidden under settings. Despite my ongoing frustrations with the Ground Station, I was generally impressed with the Typhoon H drone’s flight capabilities. You can send the Yuneec Typhoon H drone high into the air to take beautiful 4K video. Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable Like most drones of its class, the Typhoon H is packed with intelligence. Once I launched it using that big red button and the altitude control (there’s also a software control that combines these two actions, though, like so many other things, it’s not clearly labeled), I was able to set it to hover 6 feet off the ground. I quickly noticed that the Typhoon H is considerably quieter than the DJI Phantom 4. It was also quite responsive. Initially, I flew it in Smart Mode, which includes a geofence that keeps the drone from flying farther than 300 feet way, which is actually farther away than you think. I’d like to see an option for keeping it within 100 feet of the pilot at all times. Even so, Smart Mode is definitely the mode for new pilots. Angle mode removes those flight restrictions, letting it go to its max 400-foot altitude and is the mode I used most often. How cool is this? Testing the @YuneecAviation Typhoon H drone. pic.twitter.com/hEOYM0RM2i — Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) June 11, 2016 Yuneec’s Typhoon H has many laudable features, but my favorite may be the retractable landing gear. Once you launch the drone, there’s a switch on the front edge of the remote. Flip it and the landing gear pulls up toward the drone body, which leaves the 4K camera clear of all obstructions. DJI Phantom drones all feature fixed landing gear. Once you enable Advanced mode, you can access a number of cool flight and image capture features. While it only works in the slightly more limited Smart mode, Follow Me/Watch Me may be the best and most useful feature, especially for the action video set. Follow Me makes sure that the drone follows you, the pilot. Watch Me, though, adds an even better wrinkle. It will keep the gimbal camera pointed on you at all times. Since the drone can travel at up to 43 mph, this can be tremendously useful for tracking a car driver, a speedboat racer or a motocross rider. I’m none of these, but I did find that the drone had no trouble keeping up and tracking me as I ran across a field. Once the Yuneec Typhoon H drone is in the air, you can raise the landing gear to give the camera an unobstructed, 360-degree view. Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable Orbit me, which has the drone circle you while the camera stays fixed on you, also works well. When I tried out the selfie feature, oddly called Journey, I almost lost the drone. The idea is that the Typhoon H will fly up and then out 150 feet before flying in to capture the perfect selfie. I hit the software button and then watched in horror as the drone nearly crashed into some adjacent trees. A quick toggle to the Home option, though, cut short that program and brought it safely back to me. When I moved another 50 feet away from the trees, Journey mode worked flawlessly. I had less luck with Curve Cable Cam, the route-planning mode that lets you program waypoints that the drone can replay while you focus on controlling the camera view. I tried multiple times to get the drone to properly record a route and then replay it, but it kept getting stuck after the first step. My guess is that I was tripped up by the confusing instructions. Typhoon H’s obstacle avoidance was pretty good. There’s a standalone switch for it and, with it enabled, the drone would keep its distance. If I walked toward it, the drone would back up. However, if I sent it racing toward my head, the speed seemed to defeat the obstacle avoidance system and I found myself pulling back on the throttle and changing direction before the Typhoon H ran headlong into my noggin. The company plans to embed Intel's RealSense technology in future versions, which should considerably improve the drone's obstacle detection. In general, the Typhoon H offered pretty precise flight control, however I did notice that it had more of a tendency to drift than the DJI Phantom 4. My total flight time per charge, by the way, never exceeded 20 minutes, which is a bit shy of the promised 25 minutes per flight. The Yuneec Typhoon H comes equipped with an excellent gimbal and 12.4 MP camera capable of shooting 4K video, as well as JPEGs and RAW stills. All of it is saved to a micro-SD in the ball-shaped camera body (you see a live feed of what the drone sees on the 7-inch screen). The drone can turn independently of the camera, so it can go where it needs to go while the camera lens remains fixed on a target. The physical controls for panning and tilting the camera is an odd assortment of switches and dials. It’s just another instance where Yuneec needs to simplify the controls. The Yuneec Typhoon H drone has an excellent gimbal and solid 4K, 12.4 MP camera. Image: Brittany Herbert/mashable Overall, the images and video look great, but I did notice image distortion, or bowing, at the edges of the lens. As a result, buildings tended, on the very outer edges of the 115-degree wide-angle image, to bend into the frame. The camera could also use some work on handling direct sunlight. For now, the DJI Phantom 4 wins the image battle. I wish I could say I loved flying this drone, but I was often so stressed out while trying to interpret the controls and adjust for the sometimes unexpected ways it responded to my commands that I could never quite relax. Yet despite my reservations about the Yuneec Typhoon H, especially its bloated Ground System, I still think it’s a really good prosumer drone. Yes, it will take more time to figure out, but drone flyers are, generally, drone nerds. It is a bit cheaper than the DJI and offers more speed, less noise, the ability to capture unobstructed video and that awesome, retractable landing gear. Great Design • Retractable landing gear • Lots of intelligence Confusing remote and software interface This is a great drone that could use some usability improvements.Open it up
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Fast, smart
Imagery
Yuneec Typhoon H Drone
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Thứ Tư, 22 tháng 6, 2016
Thứ Ba, 21 tháng 6, 2016
The U.S. government just grounded delivery drones. The good news is commercial drone flight in the U.S. has its first set of operational rules, which were released on Tuesday from the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration. However, much of what's outlined in those new rules pretty much dashes the hopes of Amazon, Walmart and others who want to start air-dropping products to our homes. So while these new rules do lay the much-needed groundwork for commercial drone operation in U.S. airspace, they leave little (but not no) wiggle room for any use cases besides search and rescue operations and research. “We are part of a new era in aviation, and the potential for unmanned aircraft will make it safer and easier to do certain jobs, gather information and deploy disaster relief,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in a press release. Officially known as The Small Unmanned Aircraft Regulations (Part 107), the rules, which go into effect in August, apply to all commercial (or non-hobbyists) drones under 55 pounds. That might include Amazon's delivery drone, which weighs roughly the limit. Weight, though, may not be the biggest hurdle for potential drone delivery services. The FAA and DoT are also requiring that all drones remain within visual line of sight with their pilots and that the pilots can view the fliers unaided by anything more powerful than prescription glasses. The drones cannot fly over "unprotected people." It's unclear how Amazon Prime Air or anyone else could use drones to deliver packages from a warehouse to someone's home and still be able to keep eyes on the drone for the whole flight. The new rules also set maximum speed to 100 mph (far faster than most amateur drones can fly) and a max altitude of 400 feet. The drones cannot fly over "unprotected people" unless "they are directly participating in the UAS operation," notes the release. That rule would likely prohibit the commercial drones from flying over private homes. Pilots have to be at least 16 years old and have a remote flying certificate and have passed an aeronautical test. In a possible nod to the threat of drone-borne terrorism, there will also be TSA background tests for all of these drone pilots. Mashable has contacted Amazon for comment on the new rules and will update this report with its reply. Some in the aeronautics space, though, are already applauding the new rules. "We want to congratulate the FAA on publishing the final small UAS [unmanned aircraft system] rule today. The final rule will be highly beneficial to the industry overall, as it resolves many uncertainties in the law and creates an improved regulatory environment." said Dave Mathewson, executive director of the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA). It's worth noting that the FAA's new rules do not apply to model aircraft. While these rules appear to make commercial drone delivery systems virtually impossible, the FAA and DoT are also including an online waiver portal (still to be built), where pilots and companies can apply for waivers to some of these restrictions (the FAA does not say which ones), as long as they can prove that they will still be able to conduct the drone flights safely. You can read a summary of the new commercial drone rules here. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
