Drones
Wagner boss blasts Russia's elite following Moscow drone attack
The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary force has again criticised the Russian military and political elite following the drone attack on Moscow that injured two people, damaged property and left some furious the Kremlin had not better protected the capital city. In an expletive-drenched statement posted on Telegram by his press service on Tuesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin – whose mercenary fighters have played a key role in the war in Ukraine – blamed the drone attack on out-of-touch officials living in Moscow's affluent suburb of Rublyovka. "You, the Defence Ministry, have done nothing to launch an offensive," Prigozhin said in the statement. "How dare you allow the drones to reach Moscow?" "And what do ordinary people do when drones with explosives crash into their windows?" Focusing his ire on powerful residents of the upmarket Rublyovka area in Moscow's western suburbs, Prigozhin spoke of the "scum" and "swine" who sat quietly while Moscow was attacked.
A technique to jointly estimate depth and depth uncertainty for unmanned aerial vehicles
Fonder, Michaël, Van Droogenbroeck, Marc
When used by autonomous vehicles for trajectory planning or obstacle avoidance, depth estimation methods need to be reliable. Therefore, estimating the quality of the depth outputs is critical. In this paper, we show how M4Depth, a state-of-the-art depth estimation method designed for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications, can be enhanced to perform joint depth and uncertainty estimation. For that, we present a solution to convert the uncertainty estimates related to parallax generated by M4Depth into uncertainty estimates related to depth, and show that it outperforms the standard probabilistic approach. Our experiments on various public datasets demonstrate that our method performs consistently, even in zero-shot transfer. Besides, our method offers a compelling value when compared to existing multi-view depth estimation methods as it performs similarly on a multi-view depth estimation benchmark despite being 2.5 times faster and causal, as opposed to other methods. The code of our method is publicly available at https://github.com/michael-fonder/M4DepthU .
This Can't Be Good for Putin
The drone attack on Moscow early Tuesday morning showed that the war is real and near, not just for Ukrainians but also for Russians--a message that can't be good for Vladimir Putin. At least eight drones flew over Russia's capital in the wee hours, almost certainly launched by Ukraine (or perhaps by Russian rebels sympathetic to Ukraine's cause). The Kremlin claims that air-defense crews shot down or electronically jammed all the drones and that the damage done to a few apartment buildings was caused by metal shards of the disabled airframes as they fell from the sky. Even if this claim is true, it doesn't matter. The attack demonstrates that Russia's skies are porous, that Russian civilians are vulnerable.
After drone attack, fears, anger and a sense of calm in Moscow
On Tuesday morning, at least eight attack drones entered Moscow's airspace before being shot down by the city's air defences, a few hitting residential buildings on the way down. The Russian government accused Ukraine of a "terrorist attack", which Kyiv officials wryly denied. "You know, we are being drawn into the era of artificial intelligence. Perhaps not all drones are ready to attack Ukraine and want to return to their creators and ask them questions like: 'Why are you sending us [to hit] the children of Ukraine? In Kyiv?'" Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on the YouTube breakfast show of exiled Russian journalist Alexander Plushev.
Michigan Supreme Court to hear dispute over legality of using drone to take pictures of salvage yard
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Michigan Supreme Court will hear a dispute over the legality of using a drone to take pictures of a salvage yard near Traverse City. Aerial photos were used as evidence in a lawsuit against Todd and Heather Maxon, who were accused of violating a zoning ordinance and creating a nuisance with cars and other salvaged material in Long Lake Township. The Maxons argue that aerial photos violated their constitutional right against unreasonable searches.
Russia's pre-dawn air raid on Kyiv kills at least 1 while Moscow claims city attacked by drones
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Russia launched a pre-dawn air raid on Ukraine's capital of Kyiv on Tuesday, killing at least one person, while officials in Moscow claim the Russian capital was attacked by drones. At least 20 Shahed explosive drones were struck down by air defense forces in Kyiv's airspace in Russia's third attack on the capital in the past 24 hours, according to the Kyiv Military Administration via The Associated Press. Ukraine shot down 29 of the 31 drones fired into the country, most of which were in the Kyiv area, the air force later said.
Ukraine launches biggest drone attack on Moscow
MOSCOW – Ukraine launched its biggest ever drone attack on Moscow on Tuesday but air defenses destroyed all eight of the drones, Russian authorities said, bringing the 15-month war in Ukraine to the heart of the Russian capital. Drone attacks deep inside Russia have intensified in recent weeks, with strikes on oil pipeline installations and even the Kremlin earlier this month that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two people were injured, one of whom was hospitalized, in the early morning attack. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.
Get two HD camera drones for $140 this Memorial Day
Summer is almost here, and if you have some cool adventures planned, you're going to want to record them for posterity. With a drone, you can take your Instagram feed up a notch, and during our Memorial Day Sale, you can get two drones for less than the price of one. The Alpha Z PRO 4K Flying Fox 4K Wide-Angle Dual-Camera Drone Bundle includes an Alpha Z PRO Ultra HD Dual-Camera Drone and a Flying Fox Ultra HD Dual-Camera Drone for one price. Both drones have a 4K HD front camera and a 720p bottom camera, as well as altitude hold modes, 4-channel movement, and real-time FPV for an easier and more immersive flight experience. They're both headless drones with one-key automatic return so they're suitable even for beginners to fly.