The Marker unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is being developed by Russia’s equivalent of DARPA, the Foundation for Advanced Studies (FPI). It is armed with a 7.62mm machine gun and a pair of guided anti-tank missiles, and has been involved in several development projects.
According to the report, the tests were carried out in the Chelyabinsk region with two wheeled vehicles and one tracked. The longest journey was 100 kilometers which took over five hours, including on-road and off-road elements. The operator only needed to select the start and end points; the robot found its own route, creating a map as it went using cameras and other sensors. It automatically avoided obstacles while sticking to the fastest route.
While there was so much to like in the Opening Ceremony, to me four things stood out in particular.
The Drone globe
Synchronized 1,824 Intel Premium drones – weighing less than three-quarters of a pound each – "are specifically designed for entertainment purposes and are equipped with four LEDs that emit light that is true to colour and unmatched in brightness and vibrancy. Real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS also enables increased positional accuracy for higher resolution animations, sharper imagery and more dynamic 3D animations."
The Cauldron
Designed by Nendo, it is made up five panels representing the Olympic rings, which bloom to welcome the final torchbearer, Naomi Osaka. It is meant to represent the Sun, and the energy and vitality that can be obtained from it, such as plants sprouting, flowers blooming, and hands opening wide toward the sky. The cauldron weighs 2.7t, and the diameter after transformation is about 3.5m. The exterior panel, which weighs approximately 40 kg per sheet, was made by cutting out a 10 mm thick aluminum plate; molding it with a special hot press machine capable of applying a pressure of 3500 tons, which only a few exist in Japan; and then milling it.
Hydrogen energy - an eye towards sustainability - fueled the flames. Hydrogen burns with a colorless and transparent flame, and is invisible. In order to serve as the Olympic flame, it was necessary to be colored by flame reaction, so sodium carbonate was used for the “yellow” flame.
The fireworks
The video above ends with the fireworks around the top of the roof-less stadium in indigo, blue and white in the shape of a fan, an auspicious symbol in Japan. Here is another view of the fireworks
The human Pictograms
One of my favorite parts of the ceremony was performers "dressed in blue and white, wearing round masks and mittened gloves to mimic the featureless figures, posed in rapid succession to replicate all the pictograms graphic designer Masaaki Hiromura created for the 50 disciplines in 41 sports during this year’s event. "
For a cutting-edge tech, it’s pretty low-tech. Or, as Matternet CEO Andreas Raptopoulos puts it, with the tact of someone whose business model depends on still-in-development regulations, “not scalable.” In Switzerland, where Matternet has worked with the Swiss Post to complete over 3,000 flights transporting medical samples, drones are monitored remotely from an operations center near Zurich.
Despite the challenges, the promise of US drone deliveries is attracting some big players. This week, Amazon received a Federal Aviation Administration certificate to begin its own drone deliveries, making it the third company after UPS (see video) and Alphabet’s Wing subsidiary to do so. Amazon also has drone development centers in the UK, Austria, France, and Israel. The company didn’t respond to questions about when and where it might start testing its flying delivery machines, but executives have made clear that they see drones as part of a strategy to deliver packages more quickly. The tech may have other benefits, too: Drones are battery-powered, and don’t spew emissions like a delivery van. Nor do they clog up roads.
Of course, they are also leading to surveillance state worries. My personal opinion - drones are far more visible to the person on the street than satellite or high-altitude, wide area plane surveillance. We would be naive to discount all the other positive use cases drones are showing.
The FAA is now taking the first steps it believes will reduce the risk of drones to the flying public with a notice of proposed rulemaking that went live last week calling for transponder-like devices aboard all UAVs to identify these aircraft and each individual flight to ATC and possibly other aircraft in the air. The proposal will create a new regulation–FAR Part 89–that expects commercial and recreational UAS operating in the US–with very few exceptions–to be compliant with new remote identification requirements within three years of the effective date of the final rule. The agency states, “The remote identification of unmanned aircraft systems in the airspace of the United States would address safety, national security, and law enforcement concerns regarding the further integration of these aircraft into the airspace of the United States while also enabling greater operational capabilities.” This increased situational awareness, especially to pilots, is expected to become even more important as the number of UAS operations in all classes of airspace increases.
UPS Flight Forward, which already delivers medical samples by drone at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, NC, is rapidly building out its ground and air infrastructure to meet the needs of a diverse customer base. UPS Flight Forward plans to deliver packages to consumers at their homes in the near future.
“As the country’s first fully-certified drone airline, UPS Flight Forward is rapidly building a robust customer base and a network of technology partners to galvanize our leadership in drone delivery,” said Scott Price, UPS chief strategy and transformation officer. “We will create new logistics and delivery solutions no one has ever considered. Previous industry thinking had been limited to only ground transportation technology. Now we’re thinking in three dimensions.”
Evolution gave the Burmese python a nearly infallible camouflage, but technology is catching up.
A new camera developed by University of Central Florida researchers and the non-profit company Imec uses a special wavelength of light to expose the snake as an ethereal slither against black, a ghostly coil in the river of grass.
Because pythons are cold-blooded and adopt the temperature of their surroundings, thermal imaging proved useless in hunting the invasive species.
But the camera uses a near infrared 850 nanometer wavelength (humans see between 400 and 700 nanometers) to detect the snakes, which reflect light at that level differently than the flora and waterways of South Florida.
“This is a game-changer,” said Orges, noting that they also are working on mounting the camera on drones. “The way the hunters operate now, they drive the roads and look out the sides, so having a drone system would allow them to cover a bigger area.”
It is an exclusive airspace where spy planes roam, beyond the reach of weather and commercial passenger jets.
Now, the stratosphere is a frontier for competition between aviation and technology giants that say high flying, solar-powered drones could offer advantages over conventional satellites, including lower costs, easier maneuverability and quicker deployments.
Subsidiaries of Airbus SE, Boeing Co. BA -1.10% and Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. are developing stratospheric drones, which could fly unaided for months and take pictures or beam down internet services some 60,000 feet or more to the ground. They are betting the technology could create markets with military or commercial customers.
The U.S. Marine Corps is testing a prototype laser weapon that could be used by war fighters on the ground to counter enemy drones, according to a Wednesday news release.
The prototype Compact Laser Weapons System — or CLaWS — is the first ground-based laser approved by the Defense Department for use by ground troops, the Marine Corps explained.
Aerones is building heavy-lift drones for operations that can get dangerous when performed by humans. The company has recently unveiled footage of a drone solution for high-altitude window cleaning. In the future, similar drones could be used for firefighting, and the company is already testing this kind of applications as well.
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