The latest announcement from Amazon has announced the partnership with the UK government for exploring the things which are required to make the delivering the parcels by the small drones to reality, allowing the Amazon for trailing new methods of testing their delivery systems.
The cross-government team supported by the CAA (UK Civil Aviation Authority) has provided the permissions with Amazon for exploring the three major innovations. These developments are explained here, beyond the line of sight operations in rural and sub-urban areas, they were testing the sensor performance, to confirm that the drones can identify and avoid the flights and the obstacles where the single person operates multiple highly automated drones.
Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP (Vice President) of Global Innovation Policy and Communications says “The UK is a leader in enabling drone innovation, and we’ve been investing in Prime Air research and development here for quite some time.”
He also mentioned that, after this announcement it is going to strengthen the partnership with the UK and brings the Amazon closer to their goal of using the drones for safely delivery of the parcels within 30 minutes to the customers in the United Kingdom and everywhere around the world.
This radical work will help Amazon, and the Government will understand how these drones can be used safely and consistently in the logistics industry. Apart from these, this will also contribute to identifying what are the operating rules and the safety regulations that are needed to help or move the drone industry further.
Misener also said “On using the small drones for delivering the parcels will enhance the customer experience and create the new jobs in this fast-growing industry and leading the new sustainable delivery methods to reach the future requirements/demands. The United Kingdom (UK) is charting a path forward for the drone technology which will create the advantage to the consumers, industry and society.”
“We want to enable the innovation which arises from the development of drone technology by safely integrating the drones into overall aviation system,” says Tim Johnson, CAA Policy Director. “These tests by Amazon will help to inform our policy and future approach.”
Thought Controlled Drones will now make the drones more impressive when compared to the regular remote controlled boring drones. Yes, you read it right! Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a new technology that allows a human to control a troop of robotic drones just by thinking about various tasks.
How does it work? Okay let me explain you- The operator who wants to control a swarm of robotic drones should wear a skull cap which is capable of recording brain electrical activities through 128 electrodes. Then the cap gives an output of instructions to the computer. Then the system through Bluetooth transfers the same information to the drones.
According to reports, Panagiotis Artemiadis, Director of ASU’s Human-Oriented Robotics and Control stated that they have been working on developing, “a control interface between a human and a swarm of robots by using the brain recordings of the human commander.’
“After analyzing the brain recordings, we found areas of the brain that can be used to control the formation and other collective behaviours of a swarm of drones. We record the electrical activity of those areas using non-invasive methods, and we decode this activity to control variables for the robotic swarm. The human commander can monitor the motion and formation of the robotic swarms in real-time by only thinking about their desired motion,” added Artemiadis.
He also explained that the brain is wired to control the artefacts which have a look of human limbs. “The complexity of a system that requires the brain to activate areas to control robotic artefacts that do not resemble natural limbs — in our cases a swarm of drones is significant and so far unexplored.”
Artemiadis stated that this development of the technology brought out an interesting thing that certain brain areas can be activated when the human brain recognizes the collective behavior of swarms. And the spellbinding fact is, a brain can adapt to output control actions for a swarm of several robots which is eventually useful in the interaction of the human with robots.
Today, it’s been a shocking for me that the World is evolving quickly.
The Periscopes’ latest update is coming soon on Broadcast search, a new perspective with Drones, and a concept hill climbing to save your broadcast.
Today, I will make you aware about the Periscope. Just a year ago, Periscope came up with an idea of Discovering the World through someone eyes. What happens if you could see through the eyes of a stranger like me sitting in U.S. and watching the Ukraine? Probably, it sounds crazy, but the people of Periscope want to build the closest thing to teleportation.
Now, the latest update for Periscope in on the track very soon with Broadcast Search, Drones Integration and save you Live streaming video or Broadcast Video, which become a reality.
In the forthcoming weeks, periscope team is about to launch broadcast search and drone integration to help people from different communities of what they care thereby. Also, the team wants to share a preview of beyond 24 hours approach that will be available in the coming weeks.
The implementation to Broadcast is that you can search by topic or title. You will see a list of items suggested which includes #travel, #Music, #Food and more when you tap on the search button on the global list.
Also, the periscope testing two topics that you can search for: “First Scope” and “GoPro Drones.”
To broadcast through supported drone, you need to connect your iPhone to your drone’s remote. It will automatically draw in your drone’s video feed. You can narrate from a birds’ view during the broadcast.
Earlier this week, the periscope team introduced a public beta to add #save to transmit to keep them beyond 24 hours. You will get full authorized control on your broadcasts which will save on Periscope and Twitter with comments. And also, can delete the protected broadcast at any time in the configure account settings.
We hope these updates should come soon, and we experience the world with someone else EYES.
Zipline, a California startup company has now come up with a fabulous plan of using Drones to drop blood. Drones are usually categorized into two: military weapons and annoying toys. Round the world we find many plans of making Drones useful. Amazon, a leading ecommerce brand wants to make use of drones to deliver its products to customers and the social networking giant Facebook spot at beaming the internet to remote areas.
Rwanda is an African country with 11 million population, nicknamed as “Land of Thousand Hills.” Machines deliver medical therapeutic supplies in this country. So, later this year Zipline, working with UPS and Gavi (vaccine distributer), plans to set up drones in Rwanda. The objective of the startup company is to make 150 deliveries each day to 21 medical centers throughout the western half of the country with the help of 15 self-governed aircrafts. Accepting the Drone technology, the Rwandan government recently approved progressive guidelines for its use and now working with the company to measure the success of the project.
The Zipline’s drones are being designed and tested in the northern California, where they can the test the drops without creating any sort of disturbance beyond cattle. The prototypes seems to be with the payload mechanism.The mechanism here uses primitive materials like rubber bands for the ejection of drones and parachutes are made out of wax papers. These materials are made in-house for 50 cents which are designed to be used once, then chucked.
The cost effective drones reduce the complexity when working in the hilly remote areas. As the Wired report, Zipline prefer fixed-wing drones because more common quadcopters “only operate in perfect weather, and tend to fall out of the sky unpredictably,” says founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo.
“People do not wait for perfect weather to get sick or to have medical emergencies, so if we’re going to build something that’s useful, it has to be able to operate all the time,” he added.
Rwanda’s roads often get washed away in raining season restricting the movement of trucks and motor bikes which are used for dispatching essential deliveries. The CEO believes that the company’s drones delivery can match the cost of the motor bikes deliveries in far less time. And if eventually a second hub is added the deliveries can be expanded to the entire population of Rwanda.
When & How do they use these Drones?
When a doctor or nurse requests medical supplies via text message, a drone operator will immediately get the supplies from a central warehouse. The supplies are then stuffed into a padded cardboard box, and place the payload in the belly of a drone. Now, the drone is all set to fly when a fresh battery is finally clipped to the nose before uploading the flight plan from an iPad.
The drone’s travels about 60 mph and can be operated within a radius of 45 miles. The aerial catapult sends it aloft and the twin electric motors keep its flies autonomously the GPS coordinates programmed into the flight plan. Upon reaching the destination the drone moves down to the 45 feet and deploy its payload. The advanced software of the drones features things like wind speed, which allows the drone to reach the destination about the size of 4 parking spaces.
The main focus of the company is to deliver blood for treating severe trauma and hemorrhaging after childbirth, which is a frequent cause of maternal deaths in the Africa. A country where stored blood and medicine go into wastes due to the spotty electricity, central storage of therapeutic supplies, blood and deploying them during the times of emergency makes a good sense.
Ed Martinez, president of the UPS Foundation ad the company’s philanthropic arm said, “UPS helps here, providing $800,000 and its logistics expertise to get the things started.” He added that his foundation is getting benefited too with this, as they are learning more about the drone technology.
“We need an elegant solution to be able to deliver stuff quickly, to where it is needed,” says Seth Berkely, a physician and CEO of Gavi.
Zipline’s drone-port fits in a shipping container, which helps in deploying the supplies in case of natural disaster etc. Google’s project Wing and Deliver disaster relief is other idea based on this technology. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also exploring using such drones to deploy vaccines.
The prototypes are being tested in Rwanda as it has very fewer regulations and less cluttered airspace when compared to US. Soon the drone technology used for humane projects will be limelight and it is going to be followed by others including US and Europe.
