A new bi-copter for aerial photography, a waterproof fishing drone, a single-seat eVTOL aircraft for the GoFly competition, DOD wants U.S. designed and manufactured drones, a town grapples with public safety drones and privacy concerns, and the FAA revises the airman certificate process.
The new bi-copter from Zero Zero Robotics is called the V-Coptr Falcon, a tilt-rotor with a claimed flight time of 50 minutes. It features slower rotating propellers that are quieter, a 3-axis mechanical gimbal, 4K video and 12-megapixel photos, a controller with a flip-up mount for your phone. The bi-copter also has auto-follow, obstacle avoidance with a front-facing stereo camera and pre-programmed flight paths.
Gannet offers a fairly complete range of drone fishing products including bait release systems and drone fishing rods. They’ve crowdfunded the development of the Gannet Pro waterproof drone that can release 3.5kg payloads of bait hundreds of meters away. A unique barometric pressure control system adjusts flight altitude.
Video: Gannet Pro waterproof drones
The S1 is a single-seat, VTOL electric drone developed by a team from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The S1 drone takes off and lands vertically on its tail, then tilts forward for horizontal flight. Silverwing says the S1 will be able to transport a passenger 60 kilometers (37 miles) flying at a top speed of 120 km/h (75 mph). The S1 was designed to meet the requirements of the GoFly prize which is sponsored by Boeing. The competition is for innovators, inventors, engineers, and makers to design and build a personal flying device.
The Final Fly Off is at Moffett Federal Airfield at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California with support from Boeing, Google’s Planetary Ventures, and Pratt & Whitney. from Thursday, February 27th through Saturday, February 29th, 2020.
The U.S. Defense Department wants to see a U.S. ecosystem for sUAS and counter technologies and they are making it a priority in 2020. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Ellen Lord said, “We see this as developing an ecosystem to have investment in areas that the Department of Defense thinks are particularly critical for providing capabilities to the warfighter, but also translate many times into commercial products. …I think you know that DJI flooded the market with low-cost quadcopters particularly, which eroded our industrial base and really altered the landscape for the U.S. government and for the small drone industry. What we want to do is reinvigorate that.”
