News Google Update: Google Is Testing Solar-Powered 5G Internet Drones

As if balloons were not enough for Google, the Mountain View internet giant is testing solar-powered drones at Spaceport America in New Mexico to explore new ways to deliver high-speed internet from the air (5G).

According to a report in the Guardian , Google had created prototypes of such drones last year and is now testing them under a secret project named SkyBender.

The company has set up its own flight control centre at Spaceflight Operations Center and is temporarily using 15,000 square feet of hangar space in Gateway to Space terminal designed for the much-delayed Virgin Galactic spaceflights.

Under the project, Google is testing millimetre-wave radio transmissions which in high frequency could transmit gigabits of data every second which is more than any 4G LTE system. The drone will fly in high altitudes transmitting the data to all receptors at the ground level.

“The huge advantage of millimetre wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone spectrum is overcrowded. It’s packed and there’s nowhere else to go,” Jacques Rudell, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle and specialist in this technology, was quoted as saying.

Rudell also explained Google was facing and said that millimetre wave transmissions have shorter range than phone signals and hence will die out at the one-tenth distance of a 4G signal. Google can only extend the range of this signal by using a phased array of this signal which is very difficult, complex and burns a lot of power, the professor said.

Skybender uses optionally piloted aircraft called Centaur as well as solar-powered drones developed by Google Titan, a division the Mountain View company formed after acquiring New Mexio startup Titan Aerospace in 2014.

The Guardian report quoted emails between spaceport America and Google project managers that reveal the aircraft have exclusive use of the Spaceport’s runway during the tests and can even venture above the neighbouring White Sands Missile Range.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has allowed Google to carry its tests in New Mexico till July. The company is paying $300,00 to Spaceport America which is great for the airport as it was literally closed after a prototype crashed. Christine Anderson, chief executive officer of Spaceport America, has admitted that the facility is now running out of money.

“We are transitioning to supporting all aspects of the spaceport from our operational budget, as the [state] bonds have been spent except for the amount reserved for the southern road,” she wrote in a blog post earlier this month.

“We are asking the legislature for $2.8m ... We appreciate that our request is a lot of money, but we also feel that it is a relatively small amount to protect the state’s $218.5m investment already made in the new and exciting commercial space industry.”

Currently, Google is paying Virgin Galactic $1,000 a day for the use of a hangar in the Gateway to Space building.

However, Google is not the only company which has thrown a hand with the millimetre wave transmission. Earlier in 2014, Darpa, the research arm of the US military, had announced a programme called Mobile Hotspots to make a fleet of drones that could provide one gigabit per second communications for troops operating in remote areas.

Posted by Unknown Sunday, January 31, 2016

News Drone Tech Update : This Drone Delivers Beer: ​Flytrex Launches World's First Consumer Delivery UAV

Flytrex, a maker of drone tech for the consumer market, has launched a new drone designed to deliver items including -- if the promotional photos are an accurate representation -- a cold beer. Note to editors: I think I finally get what the drone hype is all about.

"Delivery is one of the possible things you can do with Sky, and it's the thing that makes the most noise," Flytrex co-founder Yariv Bash tells me over the phone when I bring up the photo, "but we're also talking about a cloud-connected drone with web API."

Flytrex has been around for about a year and this is its first foray into ready-to-fly drone hardware. Bash is also a founder of SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit that's competing in the Google Lunar X Prize and has raised more than $50M. He and a friend began playing around with drones and had the idea of trying to gamify the experience. They came up with an idea to create a kind of black box for drones. "You could use it to upload data, see where it's been, what the altitude was," says Bash. "There wasn't anything on the market that you could just plug into your drone."

The black box became Flytrex's first product, and the next logical step was to create a real-time version of the device. The live product became known as Live 3G and is a common add-on for hardcore drone enthusiasts. "With iPhone or Android you can see where you are in real time. So you can fly drones a bit further down the road than line-of-site." Many newer drones offer similar capabilities off-the-shelf. It's a fast-moving market, after all. But the Core 3G remains a robust add-on and is still a big seller for the company.

Flytrex's real breakthrough, though, was realizing that to properly gamify the experience of flying a drone, they had to build a community around flying. With the black box technology sending data to their servers, they decided to start issuing flying badges for various feats -- a badge for reaching a certain altitude, one for flying a minimum distance, etc. Drone enthusiasts took to the idea, and the company embraced an emerging community by logging completed missions on its site and issuing challenges to users.

"We have a lot of interaction with users. It's really become the core part of what we do."

As Bash tells it (he's a good storyteller) he and his friend left the house to fly a drone one day when they realized they had forgotten something. With drone delivery a topic of much speculation in the logistics sector, the pair wondered what it would take to build a drone that could return to the house and carry the item back. Then they started pondering how they would design such a drone from the ground up.

"We thought, 'We have the infrastructure, we've sold thousands of these black box devices, we have users all over the world, why not build a drone designed around the cloud?"

The company is touting the Flytrex Sky, therefore, as more than just a beer delivery device. "It's the first cloud-connected drone," says Bash. The company has created apps to control the drone. One interesting feature, which is geared toward delivery, is the ability to send the drone to a pre-determined location where another user can take over control with their phone, guiding the drone in for a precise landing. The device essentially asks the receiver for permission to land, so there's no loss of control.

The drone can fly about six miles with a light payload, like a smartphone, and can hover about half-an-hour. That means it can easily exceed line-of-sight limits set by agencies such as the FAA in the U.S., which are nonetheless fundamentally difficult to enforce. ("We always tell users to obey all local laws," says Bash.) The maximum payload is about three pounds.

While it's fun to joke about a drone serving as a beer delivery device, Flytrex is turning to its community of users to unlock the real potential of a sub-$600 delivery drone.

"We've already been approached by a few guys in Africa who are thinking of using it to transfer medicine between villages. It's perfect, because there is excellent cell coverage in Africa, which has few overhead phone lines, and medicine is so lightweight."

That sounds like a very worthy use of the technology. In the meantime, I'll be waiting for my flying beer.

Posted by Unknown Saturday, August 01, 2015

News Technology Update : FAA Clears Amazon Drones For (Experimental) Takeoff

 Summary: The Internet giant first unveiled its Prime-branded drone delivery program in late 2013 -- much to the simultaneous amazement and cautious fear of consumers everywhere.

 Amazon has cleared another hurdle, bringing its Drone-flying dreams one step closer to mass market reality.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave Amazon the green light on Thursday. While not an all out, open-ended ticket to the friendly skies, the FAA did grant Amazon Logistics, the e-commerce brand's delivery arm, with a certificate of "experimental airworthiness."
 

Basically, that means Amazon can start testing its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for research and development.

The Internet giant first unveiled its Prime-branded drone delivery program in late 2013 -- much to the simultaneous amazement and cautious fear of consumers everywhere.

Dubbed Prime Air, the technology is much more than a simple dream but not quite ready for action yet. The Seattle-headquartered company was aiming for takeoff within a few years.

The 'Everything' store tangentially followed up in September with an online Drone Store to cater to creative aerial needs, hawking accessories for UAV enthusiasts, such as cases, batteries and propellers.

Following Amazon and with projects sprouting out of the ground these days like daisies from Facebook and Google, among others, the FAA started to burst some bubbles with restrictions on commercial use issued last fall.

The federal agency followed up in February by publishing rules and regulations for the oversight of drone usage within the United States.

With its certificate in hand, Amazon has to adhere to the following guidelines:

1. All flight operations must be conducted at 400 feet or below during daylight hours in visual meteorological conditions.
2. Drones must always remain within visual line-of-sight of the pilot and observers.
3. UAV pilots controlling the drones must have at least a private pilot's certificate and current medical certification.
4. Amazon must report back and provide data to the FAA on a monthly basis. Data must include the number of flights conducted, pilot duty time per flight, unusual hardware or software malfunctions, any deviations from air traffic controllers' instructions, and any unintended loss of communication links.

The Prime Air program currently hosts development centers in the United States as well as the United Kingdom and Israel, with additional testing at multiple other unnamed international locations.

Posted by Unknown Friday, March 20, 2015

News Update Nano Technology : Robo-Wings: Military Drones That Mimic Hawks And Insects

Picking through the rubble of war-damaged buildings in combat zones, looking for enemies, survivors, booby traps or worse is one of the most dangerous jobs in the military.

To take the dirt and danger out of mopping up operations, a Pentagon agency is developing a surveillance robo-hawk that could fly through the detritus of the urban combat jungle at 45mph.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) -- already famous as the maker of some of the U.S. military's more far-fetched war robots -- aims to develop autonomous drones small enough to fit through an open window.

Speeding through unstable buildings or threatening indoor spaces at 20 meters per second, the unmanned aerial vehicle would obviate the need for physical entry that puts troops or civilian response teams at risk. 

Part of a military brief called the Fast Lightweight Autonomy program, the study is looking at developing new algorithms to allow a small UAV operating without a remote pilot and without use of GPS waypoints to navigate stairways, corridors and other obstacles.

"Birds of prey and flying insects exhibit the kinds of capabilities we want for small UAVs," said Mark Micire, DARPA's Program Manager. "Goshawks, for example, can fly very fast through a dense forest without smacking into a tree.

"Many insects, too, can dart and hover with incredible speed and precision.

"The goal of the FLA program is to explore non-traditional perception and autonomy methods that would give small UAVs the capacity to perform in a similar way, including an ability to easily navigate tight spaces at high speed and quickly recognize if it had already been in a room before."

Ultimately, the agency says the algorithms developed in the program could enhance other types of unmanned missions, including underwater environments where GPS systems don't work.

"Urban and disaster relief operations would be obvious key beneficiaries, but applications for this technology could extend to a wide variety of missions using small and large unmanned systems linked together with manned platforms as a system of systems," said Stephanie Tompkins, director of DARPA's Defense Sciences Office.

The aim of the program would be to take the grunt work out of repetitive tasks where fatigue can mean the difference between life and death.

"By enabling unmanned systems to learn 'muscle memory' and perception for basic tasks like avoiding obstacles, it would relieve overload and stress on human operators so they can focus on supervising the systems and executing the larger mission."

Miniaturizing drones that could negotiate indoor environments has also been a focus of the U.S. military.

Its Army Research Laboratory, known as ARL, in Adelphi, Maryland, are currently working on a project to develop robotic surveillance insects with wings just 3-5 centimeters in length.

The wings are made of lead zirconium titanate, known as PZT, a material that flaps and bends when a small voltage is applied.

"We demonstrated that we can actually create lift," said Dr Ron Polcawich who heads the team. "So we know this structure has the potential to fly."

Powered by tiny ultrasonic motors that measure just 2 to 3 millimeters, the team has also designed a millipede-like robot that simulates crawling when voltage is applied to the PZT material.

While the team has shown that the project works in principle, Polcawich said that it may take a further 10-15 years of research before the Army has a fully functional robotic surveillance insect.

He said that more research would be needed to establish algorithms that would allow a robotic insect to stabilize itself.

More collaboration with other institutions -- Harvard University, for instance, has a "robo-fly" project three-times larger than the ARL's robotic insect -- would be necessary to make a fully working prototype.

Polcawich said the smaller the mechanical device, the more intricate are its aerodynamic problems.

In a gust of wind a fly "doesn't instantaneously stabilize itself," Polcawich said. "It will tumble, tumble, and then stabilize itself."

Creating this type of artificial intelligence or "cognitive ability" would take time, he said, and a number of different systems must be integrated to develop a robot that functions like an insect.

Posted by Unknown Monday, February 02, 2015