Drone News

Uber has recently been taking advantage of a “captive audience” in Latin America to advertise to. The ride sharing company has been using drones to hover over people stuck in traffic with signs that encourage them to ride share, car pool, and, of course, use Uber! While some find the tactic innovative, others call it downright annoying! Check out this article to learn more about the po...

We have been hearing for about a year now that EHang has been working on the first passenger drone. But until now, it’s all been a far-fetched plan. Recently,the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS) partnered with Chinese drone manufacturer EHang to test the passenger drone at Nevada’s FAA UAS Test Site. Of course, there are many regulatory hurdles to overcome before flying around ...

Lithium Polymer batteries, or LiPos, are fairly new technology. They are what allow us to fly such amazing unmanned aerial vehicles around the skies so easily. They are light weight, powerful, and safe if handled properly. If you are going to be a drone pilot or any other sort of radio control enthusiast, it is probably a good idea to learn about LiPo batteries. Why are there different voltages? W...

Storm chasers and hurricane hunters have been around for many years. However, the ability to send a remotely controlled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is something relatively new. There are many advantages to tracking storms with a UAV. The main advantage being lowering the risk of human life! Check out how storm chasers are using drones to get more data and even save lives by tracking killer storm...

The GoPro Karma was announced last month to much excitement and fanfare. After its launch, DJI took some wind out of GoPro’s sails with their own launch of the DJI Mavic, which by all accounts, beats the Karma in many key areas. However, GoPro is not out of the race yet. They are promising a wide variety of software options that will help make Karma more useful as part of action camera ecosy...

With the rise of both commercial, hobby and military drones in the sky, many companies and governments have been focusing on how to shoot them down and stop them from flying overhead. The main way to take down a drone has been to use a laser to disrupt the drone’s navigation and optical sensors. To counter act this, some military drones are now being equipped with their own lasers that are u...

The xCraft Rogue is definitely one of the fastest RTF (ready to fly) FPV racing drones that you can buy today. The big difference between it and a regular racing quadcopter is the booster motor attached to the back of the craft. This motor drives a horizontally mounted propeller that pushed the aircraft to crazy speeds with the flip of a switch. While most racing drones use the 4 vertical propelle...

Everyone has seen kite surfing. It’s the sport where surfers use the power of the wind instead of waves to glide across the water. With drone surfing, the participants are connected to a drone to pull them. Because it takes a very powerful drone to pull someone across the water, the Alta 8 Octocopter has been the drone of choice to pull surfers who are light enough for the task. Check out th...

The United States military is using 3D printing and off the shelf components to build “swarm drones” that can be deployed from the flare dispenser of a jet fighter. These drones, code named “Perdix” are built from commercially available electronics that are then put into a 3D printed fuselage. The purpose of the Perdix drones is more surveillance than attack. “We designed P...

It’s been an exciting month for drones and the pilots that fly them. GoPro announced the Karma and DJI announced the Mavic. But among all of this hype, many people overlooked the other announcement that DJI made. The DJI Goggles. These FPV goggles will put you in the action and promise a big improvement over standard 5.8 Ghz frequency video transmission. The DJI Goggles will use DJI’s ...

A company based in the northwestern United States called DroneSeed is speeding up the process of replanting forests in areas where logging has left the landscape barren of trees. The company is using specially modified drones to first spray herbicides and then fire seeds into the ground using compressed CO2. Using drones instead of humans both speeds up the process and drastically reduces costs. I...

Earlier this year, a team of drone pilots was hired to fly to Vietnam to shoot drone footage in one of the largest cave systems in the world. This article tells the interesting story of how they transported the drones to this remote location and were able to actually shoot the footage. Despite problems with customs, equipment malfunctioning in the humidity, lack of light, high heat and many other ...