Drone News

A California startup is launching its latest drone model with a boost of funding from VC firms. Along with Idaten Ventures and other firms, Japanese VC Drone Fund is investing more than $1.8 million in Camarillo-based Sabrewing Aircraft Company – a manufacturer of vertical-take-off-and-landing cargo drones. The Drone Fund and …

The Royal Canadian Navy is sailing a new drone concept to serve as eyes and ears beyond a ship’s horizon. Kingston-class coastal defense ships will deploy Puma fixed-wing drones to provide beyond-visual-line-of-sight intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, a naval release stated. Manufactured by AeroVironment, the drone can stay aloft for two …

South African drone startup Aerobotics knows that paper airplanes are more than just childhood toys. The up-and-coming firm just received a $2 million boost in VC funding from Johannesburg-based Paper Planes Ventures. The Series A expansion brings the Paper Plane’s total investment to $4 million, an Aerobotics statement noted last …

Seattle-based DroneSeed and the Nature Conservancy Oregon are gearing up to save the ecosystem across the Pacific Northwest from invasive species. Drone swarms of up to five aircraft will be deployed to restore rangelands by re-seeding threatened areas – especially in sagebrush steppe habitats. Invasive weed species harm the sagebrush steppe, resulting in …

AI startup Clobotics is partnering with European wind-energy company GEV Wind Power to deploy AI-based autonomous-drone blade inspections for turbines “In the wind power industry, Clobotics is the only company to provide an end-to-end solution combining autonomous drone hardware with built-in computer vision, artificial intelligence and data analytics software for automated …

More than 1 billion people have watched an indoor drone show created by Swiss-based Verity Studios during China Central Television’s Chinese New Year’s Gala broadcast on Feb. 5. Billed as the “world’s most-watched TV program,” the broadcast featured 88 microdrones flying over major Chinese music stars Sun Nan and Jason …

Swedish drone-tech company Everdrone is beefing up its industry altitude with the creation of an advisory board that sports some heavy hitters. The board will feature ex-AirMap CTO Daniel Alarcon-Rubio, former microdrones Sales and Marketing Manager Michael Thoss and Jeremy Wigmore, the former CEO of Aerialtronics. Everdrone develops software and …

Swiss drone manufacturer Wingtra is teaming up with distributor RDO Equipment to roll out a certified repair center servicing the company’s vertical-takeoff-and-landing drone solutions. The certification program will reduce downtown for Wingtra’s survey drones within RDO’s domestic coverage area across the American Upper Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and Southwest. RDO will also …

DroneLife recently caught up with David Rovira, Co-Founder and COO of Rigi Technologies, manufacturers of a new delivery drone built around the package.  (Check out the video below to see Rigi’s unique design.) David tells us about Rigi, where they fit in the delivery marketplace, and some of the challenges of using …

Drone firm Vigilant Aerospace has obtained a special license from the U.S. State Department to allow streamlined export of its FlightHorizon GCS UAS system. By obtaining a “special determination (known as a Commodity Jurisdiction),” Vigilant can send out the system without being classified as a “defense article” under International Traffic …