Drones of the Sea

Driverless Boats?

On Monday, the Pentagon, revealed the "Sea Hunter". It is a self-driving, 132-foot ship that can travel up to 10,000 nautical miles (used for charting and navigation and about 0.5 more than a regular "mile"). This ship will be used for hunting for submarines and underwater mines, hence the name. The Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will work with the Navy to test the ship off of the San Diego coastline during the next two years to see how it works on its own and how it avoids other ships.

    

     The "Sea Hunter" works off of sonar, radar, cameras, and a global positioning system. Military leader and commercial shipping industries will be tracking how the progress on this ship goes. The companies that ship from Europe to Asia have been looking for a way to get fleets of unmanned ship to cut down on coast and go through areas with pirates, although there are no plans to arm the ship with weapons. 

     The ship will have no human operators on it, but some people see this as a bad thing. They see it this way because they don't think that a ship can respond to the dangers at sea or foresee them. People also wonder if the ship will be able to be hacked into. Military officials have been working on a way to cyber-secure the ship so that it is not able to be hacked. Right now, the ship costs $120 million to develop but DARPA officials say that they can bring the production cost down to $20 million.       

Google and Drones

Google and Drones

     Google has patented many things, including self-driving delivery trucks, and on April 25 they patented outlines of methods for drones to deliver packages to homes. We know that Google has been planning to use drones to deliver along with Amazon and Walmart, but we didn't know how. The patent tells use that instead of having the drone try and land in a lawn or on your front steps, it could hover over its target location and lower a package from a cable. It will most likely have an alarm that tells people to stay back, and have a LED light that changes from red, to yellow, to green depending on when you can pick up the package. Then it will bring its cable back up and say a message that tell you that you are able to retrieve your package and fly back to its base to recharge and get a new package. Google will also have to see if the FFA allows this method before they start using it and, once again, they say that they will be planning to do drone deliveries by 2017. The thing is, this might not even be there idea that they use because Google patents a lot of things that either don't end up working or just aren't used. So, do you think that Google will use this idea?    

    

Australian Drone Delivery

Australian Drone Delivery

     Amazon and Google plan to start drone delivery in 2017 in America, but Australia has them beat. Australia's postal service has successfully tested the delivery of small packages on drones and plan to start delivering later this year. The Australian Post has been backed up by the Civil Aviation Authority (CASA) to test delivery of packages by drone in 50 locations. The Australian Post said that the testing will allow them to, well, test new technology that could bring packages to peoples doors faster and safely. Even items that could save lives like medicine. Students in Spain have even created a drone design that is able to deliver organs! 

     There are many companies interested in this testing including Amazon, Walmart, and Maersk (an Alibaba and Danish shipping company). The Australian Post CEO, Ahmed Fahour, says that this drone service will be used to deliver in time-critical situations and where there is not an easily accessible way somewhere. He also says that they will be testing this program for months to figure out what the drones can deliver and the fastest, safest, and easiest way to deliver.    

Drone Deliveries

Drone Deliveries

     Companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Google are all experimenting with drones to deliver items. They are restricted because of the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has a rule that requires them to ask for approval before each test flight. In March, a drone company called Flirtey completed the first government-sanctioned autonomous (self controlled) drone delivery in a U.S. urban area. The drone was delivering emergency supplies to an empty house in Hawthorne, Nev. using a GPS.

     Yesterday in Japan, the Japanese government drone maker Autonomous Control System Laboratory (ACSL) began testing drone deliveries for homes. Japan doesn't allow drones to be flown in largely populated areas, but there government has allowed for drone delivery tests to happen in Chiba. One of the tests included having a drone go from the top of a shopping center to a park carrying a bottle of wine in a basket. The city of Chiba wants drone delivery to be ready by 2020, for the Summer Olympics.   

 

Drones for the Army

Drones for the Army

     The British and Norwegian armies are using drones to help them in ground operations. The drone that they use is called the Black Hornet. This drone is also being used by The Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE) at Fort Benning, Georgia as a drone to look at for the drone industry. This is because the U.S. also wants to use drones in ground operations.

Image of a Black Hornet

    The solider Borne Sensors (SBS) wants the drones to weigh less than a third of a pound and able to be carried in a pocket. The U.S. Army wants to keep ahead of scientific and engineering innovations. In other words, they want to be really advanced. One of the ways that they plan to do that is by using small-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS, also known as drones). The Army plans to have all soldiers equipped with "pocket drones" by 2018.

           

New Type of Drone Power

Hydrogen-Powered Drones

     Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, can only stay in the air for around 20 minutes and have a charge time of one to two hours. What if someone told you that there is a better way? Well Intelligent Energy, a UK-based power technology company, has created  hydrogen-powered drones. These drone can stay in the air for up to two hours, six times the normally amount, and only take minutes to charge. The device that does this is a fuel tank on the bottom of the drone. 

     The extended flight time and shortened recharge time will prove handy for people mapping out an area or searching for someone/something. It will mainly affect people in the oil, gas, mapping, and agriculture fields but will also allow regular people to enjoy more time flying instead of more time grounded. Another thing that this will be good for is for movies and other television uses. The drone can stay out longer to film more at a time and will charge quickly so that there aren't long breaks in the filming. Intelligent Energy is hoping to get a commercial version by 2017.

Drones-v.s.-Poachers

Drones-v.s.-Poachers

     Drones can be used for many things, including filming, war, and possibly deliveries, but these new drones protect wildlife. The Lindbergh Foundation made an Air Shepherd program that catches poachers who are endangering elephants and rhinos. This program is a fleet of unmanned drones. In South Africa, the Air Shepard drones will go through months of training and then be put out in popular areas for poaching. The drones will be able to fly silently and have infrared scanners. This will allow them to spot without being spotted. When the drone spots a poacher, rangers will be sent out to catch them. If they try and run, then the drone will follow them. When the testing for the Air Shepard drones was happening, most poachers stopped poaching because they were afraid of being caught. Air Shepard hopes to be used in many other countries and right now is discussing possibilities with officials in five other country's.