self-flying
Latest
Skydio's station lets self-flying drones work around the clock
Skydio wants to make its self-flying drone useful to companies who want drones in the air at all times. It just revealed a Skydio 2 Dock system that lets the drone charge itself and, ideally, run with virtually no human intervention. The robotic flyer uses inertial and visual navigation to touch down on a charging pad that extends from a box that both feeds power (from a wall outlet or vehicle) and transfers data through Ethernet or WiFi.
Aircraft lands itself truly autonomously for the first time
Many airliners can land automatically, but they don't really land autonomously -- the airport is guiding them in with a radio signal (the Instrument Landing System). And when many smaller airports don't have this feature, it's not even an option. Researchers at Technische Universität München might just make true autonomous landing a practical reality, though. They've successfully tested a system that uses a combination of computer vision and GPS to have the aircraft land itself.
Airbus shares a glimpse of its flying taxi interior
Airbus has been working on its Vahana project for years. It's an attempt to create an autonomous passenger drone network that could operate like a flying version of the Waymo's self-driving cars. In January 2018, the company's flying taxi took to the skies for the first time. Now we're getting a glimpse of what the interior might look like. In a blog post, the Airbus Vahana team shared photos of Alpha Two -- its first demonstrator with a finished interior.
