The way these schoolchildren in rural Uganda react to a hobbyist's drone flight demo is so delightful. Honestly, my reaction when I first saw a friend navigate his UAV into the air was about the same.
Mark Brandon Smith shot this wonderful video, and tells the tale behind it. Read the rest
Officials in Oklahoma claim to have halted the first attempt in the state to smuggle contraband into a prison with an unmanned aerial vehicle. Read the rest
Amid growing fears about safety and security risks from unauthorized drone flights, federal regulators say they plan to require pretty much all recreational drones in the U.S. to be registered. Read the rest
I believe this to be very likely faked, but nonetheless fantastic. Read the rest
Never change, New York Times. Read the rest
“I duct-taped a Superman figure to my Phantom 3 and flew it over Victoria Park. Glorious!” Read the rest
Mark Harrison made a quadcopter body out of sections of pool noodle, producing a UAV that's cheap, rugged and great for practicing on. As he points out on Make, the beauty of multicopters is that they don't have to be aerodynamic and their bodies don't have any moving parts, giving you lots of flexibility in design. Plus: "Let's face it, it's just funny to think of flying pool noodles!" Read the rest
Gmoke sez, "Two grad students at Harvard have developed a method to print sheets of miniature drones, the Harvard Monolithic Bee or Mobee, that pop-up into their final form. So far they've got them to flap their titanium wings but they don't yet seem to be able to fly. Their construction technique can be used for very many other small devices too."
Pop-up Fabrication of the Harvard Monolithic Bee (Mobee)
(Thanks, Gmoke!) Read the rest
A 1924 article by Winston Churchill imagined drone warfare: "Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings -- nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke? Could not explosives even of the existing type be guided automatically in flying machines by wireless or other rays, without a human pilot, in ceaseless procession over a hostile city, arsenal, camp or dockyard?"
He called the article "Shall We All Commit Suicide?"
As Bruce Sterling points out, Churchill was a huge sf fan.
“Shall We All Commit Suicide?” or, Winston Churchill Imagines Drone Warfare, 1924
(Image: Predator Drone Aviation Nation Las Vegas, NV, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from davidrsmith's photostream) Read the rest
