News

Commercial drones are proving their worth in industries across the globe – but they still suffer from a major limitation.  Most rotary aircraft require a great deal of energy to stay airborne: while most battery technologies are heavy for the energy they provide. When energy is transferred into or out …

A forestry company in Victoria, Australia, is using drones and thermal cameras to spot koalas before trees are cut down or controlled burns take place. Hazelwood Forestry, in Latrobe Valley is regularly tasked with cutting down Hancock Victoria Plantations’ eucalyptus and pine trees. One complication is that carelessly harvesting – which …

Connectivity giant AT&T has collaborated with UK pharmaceutical packaging provider Softbox to explore the potential of medical drone deliveries. AT&T’s LTE-connected drone has been ferrying Softbox’s thermal packaging system, ‘Skypod’, with medicines from healthcare provider Merck to locations across Puerto Rico. The proof of concept with Softbox aims to show …

An Australian company has developed a powerful solution to provide drones with a better view from above. Sentient Vision Systems has launched a miniaturized drone-sensor system known as Kestrel that optimizes autonomous object-detection especially designed for security and military use. According to a company press release, the scalable system integrates …

In October of 2017, we published a story about DroneDeploy‘s huge growth: “In just this year, the company has mapped more than 25 million acres, representing an area larger than the country of Iceland. They’ve processed 40 million images in 2017, create thousands of maps every day, and have processed …

A Colorado-based firm is shedding new light from above on vital data for the oil and gas pipeline industry. SolSpec has developed an online asset management tool that allows users to visualize and extract information specific to pipeline construction and operations. The drone system has already mapped 3,000 miles of …

There are two universal truths in the drone industry. The first is that technology companies will file rafts of drone-related patents in an attempt to score easy PR and cover even the most obscure bases for the future. The second is that tech workers need the occasional caffeine hit from …

As expected, DJI has today unveiled two new drones that will aim to bridge the divide between the company’s professional and consumer models. Both are foldable iterations of the popular, top-selling Mavic Pro. Introducing the Mavic 2 Pro and the Mavic 2 Zoom… DJI’s New Drones: The Headlines DJI’s new …

Industry studies suggest the drone mitigation (or anti-drone) market will to grow to a billion-dollar industry within six years with predicted compound annual growth rate of 23.89 percent across 2018-22. For two counter-drone firms, recent good news stakes their claims to a piece of that fiscal pie. DroneShield Australian-based DroneShield …

We’re not quite at the stage at which drones are taking an active role in day to day agriculture. Despite hardware releases from DJI and other manufacturers with a view to autonomously sowing seeds and dispensing pesticides, most drone applications on the farm are more passive in nature: field mapping, …