Police warn unauthorised drone users could be prosecuted as restrictions are in place for conference week
Drones have been seized by police after they were flown in breach of airspace restrictions during the Labour party conference in Liverpool.
Merseyside police said they seized three drones on Saturday after a temporary airspace restriction covering much of Liverpool city centre was put in place.
Continue reading...With everything from coffee to mining equipment now being delivered by drone, operators are exploring technology to stop connection black spots sending drones dropping from the sky
Jani Talikka was a commercial pilot flying Boeing 717s, but after ordering a drone delivery as a customer, he decided to shift gears.
“I didn’t leave fixed-wing aviation because I disliked it – but drones are cutting edge,” he told Guardian Australia. “It’s rare you get to be a part of something like this at the start.”
Continue reading...The wind hovering behaviour of the bird of prey is the ‘closest representation in the avian world to fixed wing aircraft’, says researcher
When researchers were hunting for a way to make drones fly more smoothly as they delivered food and packages, they turned to an unusual source for inspiration: the common kestrel.
RMIT and the University of Bristol researchers began tracking the flight motions of two Australian kestrels. They attached reflective markers to the birds and analysed their motion using a motion tracking system – the same technology used to create CGI effects.
Continue reading...In high-density places such as Sydney many drones may hover over an animal at once, amplifying disturbance pressure
As whales migrate up Australia’s east coast in the coming months, drones are hot on their tails. But experts are warning that low-flying drones seeking a viral shot can disrupt the whales’ migration patterns and may even place their mating season at risk.
Grace Russell, a PhD candidate at Southern Cross University who studies marine mammals with drones, said whales had been known to exhibit disturbance behaviours when drones were flown near them at low altitudes.
Continue reading...Change means drone operators could face fines up to £2,500 for flying within 400 metres of prisons or young offender institutions
New “no-fly zones” will be introduced around prisons in England and Wales to prevent drones being used to deliver drugs and contraband to inmates.
The legal change will mean drone operators could face fines of up to £2,500 for flying within 400 metres of closed prisons or young offender institutions.
Continue reading...Mohamad al-Bared used technology at Coventry home to make drone designed to deliver a warhead or chemical weapon for IS
A Birmingham University PhD student has been found guilty of using a 3D printer at home to build a “kamikaze” drone designed to deliver an explosive warhead or chemical weapon for Islamic State (IS) terrorists.
Mechanical engineering graduate Mohamad al-Bared, 27, was found guilty of using a 3D printer to make the drone at his Coventry home while sending weekly updates to IS.
Continue reading...A prototype craft that will fly network telecoms starts trials with north Wales mountain rescue services next year
Drones circling above the peaks of Snowdonia, providing an airborne mobile network in remote areas, may soon become a feature of the region’s mountain rescue operation.
The drones – like small unmanned gliders but with twin engines – would carry equipment providing 4G and 5G connectivity that would link mountain rescue teams and other emergency services with people stranded, lost or injured in remote hills where the mobile phone signal is often patchy or nonexistent.
Continue reading...Trial will take treatments from Portsmouth to St Mary’s hospital and health service plans similar drops elsewhere in England
The NHS plans to use drones to fly chemotherapy drugs to cancer patients in England to avoid the need for long journeys to collect them.
The devices will transport doses from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight in a trial that, if successful, will lead to drones being used for similar drops elsewhere.
Continue reading...The new ‘postal drone routes’ will improve the reliability of mail services to remote communities, the company said
Royal Mail has announced plans to increase its use of drones for deliveries with the creation of 50 new “postal drone routes” over the next three years.
Under a partnership with logistics drone company Windracers, and subject to Civil Aviation Authority approval, the move will provide faster and more convenient services for remote communities, Royal Mail said.
Continue reading...Use of the devices has taken off in recent years, with apparent benefits including less distress to animals
As new year approaches, crowds around the world may be expecting whizzes and bangs to light up the sky. But the appeal of fireworks could fizzle out with the growing use of drones for light shows.
One notable example was the opening ceremony of this year’s Tokyo Olympics, while the Over the Top NYE event at Reunion Tower in Dallas is among those planning to combine fireworks and drones to welcome 2022.
Continue reading...We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders
From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.
Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.
Continue reading...Departure marks one of the largest-scale abandonments of eggs ever at coastal site north of San Diego
About 3,000 elegant tern eggs were abandoned at a southern California nesting island after a drone crashed and scared off the birds, a newspaper reported Friday.
Two drones were flown illegally over the Bolsa Chica ecological reserve in Huntington Beach in May and one of them went down in the wetlands, the Orange County Register said.
Continue reading...Technology could ensure critical medicines reach Lake Victoria communities with country’s highest prevalence of HIV/Aids
As the bottles of medication are carefully loaded into the body of the drone, a small crowd gathers to watch on the other side of the yellow tape marking out the grassy landing strip.
With a gentle buzz the drone rises, a little uncertainly, into the sky, on its 1.5-metre wings. The precious cargo leaving Bufumira health centre III, in Uganda’s Kalangala district, is critical drugs for people living in some of the most far-flung communities in the region. Kalangala is made up of 84 islands in Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake, which Uganda shares with Tanzania and Kenya.
Continue reading...When groups of sinister drones began hovering over homes in America’s Midwest, the FBI, US Air Force and 16 police forces set up a task force. But the drones vanished. Did they even exist?
At twilight on New Year’s Eve, 2020, Placido Montoya, 35, a plumber from Fort Morgan, Colorado, was driving to work. Ahead of him he noticed blinking lights in the sky. He’d heard rumours of mysterious drones, whispers in his local community, but now he was seeing them with his own eyes. In the early morning gloom, it was hard to make out how big the lights were and how many were hovering above him. But one thing was clear to Montoya: he needed to give chase.
As he approached the drones in his car, they “took off very fast” and Montoya tried to follow. He confesses hitting 120mph before losing track of them. “They were creepy, really creepy,” he says. “I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s almost as if they were watching us.”
Continue reading...A powerful battery of drones, thermal cameras and heartbeat detectors are being deployed to exclude asylum seekers
Khaled has been playing “the game” for a year now. A former law student, he left Afghanistan in 2018, driven by precarious economic circumstances and fear for his security, as the Taliban were increasingly targeting Kabul.
But when he reached Europe, he realised the chances at winning the game were stacked against him. Getting to Europe’s borders was easy compared with actually crossing into the EU, he says, and there were more than physical obstacles preventing him from getting to Germany, where his uncle and girlfriend live.
Continue reading...A video shot by an FPV drone flying through a Minnesota bowling alley in one take has gone viral. The one-and-a-half-minute-long clip titled Right Up Our Valley was filmed in a single shot, albeit after 10-12 attempts. "I think there's some scepticism there of it being a true one-take. It is a true one-take. There's no CGI," said the video's director, Anthony Jaska. The sound was added in post-production as the buzzing from the drone's four blades make it impractical to use natural audio. The filmmakers said the goal of the video was to remind people of local businesses such as the bowling alley as public health measures from the coronavirus pandemic ease
Continue reading...Exclusive: Document produced by university cited agency as secret funder of research
For an agency devoted to secrecy and surveillance, it is an embarrassing slip-up. An inadvertent disclosure on a university document has revealed that MI5 is partly behind what was meant to be a covert bug and drone research project.
Ostensibly, Imperial College’s research was to create a quadcopter system for charging remote agricultural sensors – but MI5’s participation has emerged because somebody involved stated it was the secret second funder of the programme.
Continue reading...Videos taken near the remote Highland area of Spean Bridge and over Edinburgh's show drones taking off and forming various shapes, including a leaping stag
Navy seizes UUV, likely a Chinese Sea Wing, that experts say could be used to plot routes for military subs
An Indonesian fisher has found what experts say is likely to be a Chinese submarine drone in waters on a strategic maritime route from the South China Sea to Australia.
According to Indonesian media the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) was found on 20 December near Selayar Island in South Sulawesi. Six days later it was handed to police and then transferred to the Indonesian military.
Continue reading...Our 20 favourite pieces of the year
What links an eccentric Oxford classics don, billionaire US evangelicals and a tiny, missing fragment of an ancient manuscript?
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