Category Archives: Research

Piasecki Aircraft Gets US Department of Energy Award for Hydrogen-Powered Urban Air Mobility Feasibility Study

Piasecki Aircraft Corporation has announced that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract by the Department of Energy (DOE) to evaluate the feasibility of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Urban Air Mobility (UAM) rotorcraft. The study is focused on the feasibility of using hydrogen fuel cells as a power source for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) UAM vehicles, which are expected to play a significant role in the future of urban transportation. Continue reading

UK’s Bold Plan to Generate Electricity from Drones gets Research Grant

Using drones to harvest wind energy could play a significant role in the UK’s net-zero mission. University of Bristol’s Lecturer in Flight Dynamics and Control Dr Duc H. Nguyen has landed a £375,000 grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to conduct further research into the emerging field of Airborne Wind Energy Systems (AWES). Continue reading

Rapid In-Flight Image Quality Check for UAV-Enabled Bridge Inspection

In a recently published paper, researchers in New Zealand and Australia present a novel IIQC framework, which is specifically designed for rapidly evaluating the quality of UAV-captured images for UAV-enabled bridge inspection. This framework utilises a BIM of the target bridge and incorporates three key components for accurately assessing image quality and presenting the results to the UAV pilot. Continue reading

Fully Neuromorphic Vision and Control for Autonomous Drone Flight

Animal brains use less data and energy compared to current deep neural networks running on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). This makes it hard to develop tiny autonomous drones, which are too small and light for heavy hardware and big batteries. Recently, the emergence of neuromorphic processors that mimic how brains function has made it possible for researchers from Delft University of Technology to develop a drone that uses neuromorphic vision and control for autonomous flight. Continue reading