UAV roundup February 2016: The latest in unmanned aerial vehicle news
In this first edition of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) roundup, we touch on a number of topics, including an interactive US state legislation map, a UGV-carrying drone, a UAV landing on a moving vehicle, AUVSI reactions to US bills, and the latest on Amazon’s delivery drones.
AUVSI state legislation map
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) has developed an interactive map containing details on data on all unmanned systems-related state legislation.
The interactive, sortable map provides users with details that include a summary of each state bill. AUVSI notes that there are, to date, more than 150 active bills in more than 30 states either carried over from 2015, or introduced this year.
Carnegie Mellon partners with aircraft manufacturer on UGV-carried drone
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have partnered with Sikorksky Aircraft to show how autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles are able to work with unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) to perform military operations.
In a demonstration held last fall for the U.S. Arm, an optionally-manned Black Hawk helicopter delivered CMU’s Land Tamer autonomous ground vehicle from the university’s National Robotics Engineering Center to a remote site, where the Land Tamer searched for potential contamination of the area, according to the AUVSI.
UAV lands on moving vehicle
Researchers in Germany successfully landed a 9.8 ft. fixed-wing UAV on top of a moving car traveling at traveling at 47 mph, the first time that has been done, according to the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
In demonstrating this ability, the DLR team suggests that this could lead to lighter, longer-flying UAVs. The test flight occurred at the Mindelheim-Mattsies airfield in Bavaria and involved a 44 lb. UAV built by DLR, which said that the design incorporates elements of unmanned aircraft and robotics to result in an autonomous vehicle capable of approaching and landing on a moving car.
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James Carroll
Former VSD Editor James Carroll joined the team 2013. Carroll covered machine vision and imaging from numerous angles, including application stories, industry news, market updates, and new products. In addition to writing and editing articles, Carroll managed the Innovators Awards program and webcasts.