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Category: drones

The inventor of the first robot in Greece, Konstantinos Soukos, has pushed Greece into a new era by creating laser weapons that target drones.

When the inventor and businessman Konstantinos Soukos built the first robot in Greece in 1985, he did not imagine that 36 years later he would supply many military forces across the world.

One of the newest creations that stands out at the DEFEA 2021 Defence Exhibition in Athens is the High Energy Laser Weapon developed by the Soukos Robots company which promises to transfer energy at lightning speed.

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Drone swarms are a new concept and are linked to the development of artificial intelligence and networked military units, a futuristic battlefield application that uses the latest advances in technology.

The use of this kind of technology in conflict has raised concerns for years as human-rights groups decried the advent of “killer robots.” Evidence shows that what is actually happening is not the creation of “killer robots,” but rather the use of technology to enable drones and other autonomous or unmanned systems to work together.

Why this matters is because other countries in the region are working on new technologies as well. Iran used drones and cruise missiles to attack Saudi Arabia in September 2019. Turkey has built a drone that reportedly “hunted down” people in Libya, although much remains shrouded in mystery regarding how autonomous the drone was and whether it really hunted down adversaries using artificial intelligence.

Regardless of how Turkey’s Kargu-2 autonomous drone worked, media headlines said it may represent the first use of “AI-armed drones,” and the “new era” of robot war may be upon us.

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Meet ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’

The drone fleet used by SpaceX to catch falling rockets now has a third autonomous ship, whimsically called “A Shortfall of Gravitas.”

Founder Elon Musk unveiled the newest floating rocket landing pad on Twitter Friday (July 9) along with a dramatic video from a flying drone circling the ship.

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Planetary scientists estimate that each year, about 500 meteorites survive the fiery trip through Earth’s atmosphere and fall to our planet’s surface. Most are quite small, and less than 2% of them are ever recovered. While the majority of rocks from space may not be recoverable due to ending up in oceans or remote, inaccessible areas, other meteorite falls are just not witnessed or known about.

But new technology has upped the number known falls in recent years. Doppler radar has detected meteorite falls, as well as all-sky camera networks specifically on the lookout for meteors. Additionally, increased use of dashcams and security cameras have allowed for more serendipitous sightings and data on fireballs and potential meteorite falls.

A team of researchers is now taking advantage of additional technology advances by testing out drones and machine learning for automated searches for small meteorites. The drones are programmed to fly a grid search pattern in a projected “strewn field” for a recent meteorite fall, taking systematic pictures of the ground over a large survey area. Artificial intelligence is then used to search through the pictures to identify potential meteorites.

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As Ross Embleton, the guy who designed Mavic 2 Drone Cage for Heliguy, points out:

Cages are becoming an incredibly important drone accessory, helping to increase flight safety and drone protection. Our customers wanted an affordable, collision-proof cage for Mavic 2 drones; a series that is reliable, popular, lightweight, and small enough to carry out internal inspections. The cage opens new doors for enterprise users. It allows them to operate safely and capture quality data, with greater, 360-degree protection.

London Fire Brigade (LFB), one of the largest firefighting and rescue organizations in the world, has endorsed the Mavic 2 Drone Cage, saying it makes “previously impossible operations possible.”

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Municipalities regularly have to check for pollution in local waterways, often utilizing crews of workers in boats. The new Nixie system is intended to make things much quicker, simpler and ultimately cheaper, using a water-sampling drone instead.

Developed by New York-based startup Reign Maker, the hardware end of the setup consists of the pole-like Nixie Base sampling device, that has a docking mechanism at the top and a 500-ml (16.9-oz) water collection bottle in a lockable holder at the bottom. It’s designed to work with a client-supplied and-operated DJI Matrice 600 or Matrice 300 RTK multicopter drone – for an extra fee, Reign Maker will provide a pilot and drone.

In either scenario, the drone’s operator begins by hovering the copter over another shore-based worker, who attaches the Base to the undercarriage of the unmodified aircraft. Attaching it involves simply pulling down on a lever at the bottom of the Base to open its docking mechanism, making sure that the mechanism is properly engaged with the drone, then releasing the lever to close and secure it.

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After the program was first revealed in 2019, the Air Force’s then-Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper stated he wanted to see operational demonstrations within two years. The latest test flight of the Skyborg-equipped Avenger shows the service has clearly hit that benchmark.

The General Atomics Avenger was used in experiments with another autonomy system in 2020, developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program that sought to develop drones that could demonstrate “collaborative autonomy,” or the ability to work cooperatively.

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