Lifeboat Foundation

Wind turbine maintenance is an important yet unheralded task. But drones have arrived to spice things up.

RigiTech is a Swiss drone manufacturer and operator boasting some of the most extensive beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight authorizations in the industry. And it just completed a landmark test of its Eiger delivery system, flying spare parts to the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm, located 20 sm (17 nm) off the coast of Denmark. But there’s a catch—the drones didn’t need to land.

The tests marked the rollout of RigiTech’s prototype precision dropping system, which autonomously releases cargo from a few feet in the air when it detects the drone has reached its destination. That’s a game-changer in the case of offshore wind turbines, which typically do not have landing pads.

Research into AI is experiencing a boom, so we have rounded up the best of news from the past month to help you keep up to date.

By Matthew Sparkes

Now that’s cool. I’d like one to keep harass me cats and dog haha actually it be useful. Am wondering what ever happened to the indoor Amazon security drone.

Advanced family robots from Moorebot.

A prototype drone developed at Imperial College London is able to withstand temperatures of up to 200°C for 10 minutes.

The so-called FireDrone (Opens in a new window) is designed to fly into burning buildings or forest fires and provide “crucial first-hand data” otherwise unavailable to first responders. For example, identifying where people are trapped in a burning building without fire fighters needing to perform a room-by-room search.

Science fiction often paints a terrifying picture of the future—think aliens decimating humanity, à la The War of the Worlds. But sometimes the future becoming the present can be pretty amazing—who doesn’t love successful space launches majestically catapulting humans skyward?

Or take Earth’s oceans, which are currently in the middle of a technological revolution that, outside of some very nerdy circles, has gone largely unnoticed.

“We’re at the cusp of a proliferation of lots of autonomous vehicles in the ocean,” said Alex De Robertis, a biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Things that were science fiction not so long ago are kind of routine now.” That includes saildrones, which look like oversized orange surfboards, each with a hard, carbon-fiber sail (called a wing) and a stash of scientific equipment.

Cybertruck release candidates (i.e. near-production versions that may have a few faults) are due in August, with customer deliveries targeted for the end of Q3 2023. Given that likely equates to an end-of-September delivery event, it makes sense that Tesla is already gearing up for mass production.

A leaked video also gave a brief preview of Cybertruck production in action. Check out the below tweet for more.

Our first delivery with DOM Drone by Flirtey, from the Whangaparaoa store in New Zealand!

DOM (previously known as ‘DRU’) is the personality behind Domino’s innovative customer-facing technology, including our bots, autonomous delivery vehicle, drone and Pizza Checker. He is cheeky and endearing, but most importantly he puts the customer at the heart of everything he does. Rebranded to ‘DOM’ in 2019, he is our newest recruit and helps our team members to create efficiencies in their jobs.

The Drone Jar creates sound using three square-wave oscillators which modulate against each other to create dynamic tones. These oscillators alone already open up a wealth of sonic possibilities, but combined with the exciting control method, the Drone Jar becomes an inspiring and exploratory way to create music.

Though the Drone Jar is best suited to dark environments where light can be directed at the inputs, it also creates neat results outside in the sun. Check out the video demonstration, which uses a flashing bike light, to hear the endless potential of this little device!

By arming each drone with its own sensors, researchers have created the first swarm capable of navigating a wide environment.