A chilling video reminiscent of Black Mirror of a robot dog opening fire with a submachine gun strapped to its back - uploaded by the Russian founder of a hoverbike company - is a preview of future warfare. Alexander Atamanov, the founder of a Russian hoverbike company, uploaded the viral video, which shows a UnitreeYushu dogbot that retails online for about $3,000 shooting at snow-covered hills outside, and it appears he was simply creating something to play around with. At a time when autonomous drones are being used to target terrorists and the US Army has its own sniper rifle-armed robot dog, the video is a terrifying reminder that this type weapon is already a reality. The robot dog, called a'technology dog' by its manufacturer, appears to be carrying a Russian gun known as a PP-19 Vityaz, a type of submachine gun that's based on the AK-47 design The robot dog, called a'technology dog' by its manufacturer, appears to be carrying a Russian gun known as a PP-19 Vityaz, a type of submachine gun that's based on the AK-47 design, according to Vice. The robot also has strips of Velcro on its sides and a Russian flag is seen on its left flank.

In this paper, we tackle the problem of flying a quadrotor using time-optimal control policies that can be replanned online when the environment changes or when encountering unknown disturbances. This problem is challenging as the time-optimal trajectories that consider the full quadrotor dynamics are computationally expensive to generate (order of minutes or even hours). We introduce a sampling-based method for efficient generation of time-optimal paths of a point-mass model. These paths are then tracked using a Model Predictive Contouring Control approach that considers the full quadrotor dynamics and the single rotor thrust limits. Our combined approach is able to run in real-time, being the first time-optimal method that is able to adapt to changes on-the-fly. We showcase our approach's adaption capabilities by flying a quadrotor at more than 60 km/h in a racing track where gates are moving. Additionally, we show that our online replanning approach can cope with strong disturbances caused by winds of up to 68 km/h.

There's a relatively new sport involving the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles and it's gaining more attention each year. Competitors race their first-person view drones around a circuit filled with obstacles — almost like watching a "Star Wars"-like pod racing! Learn about the sport, how you can get involved, and check out our guide for owning your own drone.. Explore this storyboard about Aviation by The Tech Desk on Flipboard.

After years of growth bulletins, Amazon will likely be rolling out supply by drone for Prime prospects in areas of California and Texas. Whereas that is a small slice of consumers, for now, this information could not be extra necessary for the business drone sector, which has been gathering tons of momentum over the previous couple of months. Amazon will be a part of Walmart in providing restricted drone supply to a subset of consumers, signaling a vote of confidence within the expertise and a shifting regulatory surroundings from the 2 behemoth retailers. Amazon's Prime Air service will ship packages as much as 5 kilos in lower than an hour utilizing drones. The service is about to roll out to prospects in Lockeford, California, and School Station, Texas.

An alarm is triggered and a swarm of drones swoops in, surrounds the building and uses antennas to locate people inside, enabling firefighters to go straight to the stricken individuals. Just in the nick of time – no deaths are recorded. Elsewhere in the city, drones fly back and forth delivering tissue samples from hospitals to specialist labs for analysis, while another rushes a defibrillator to someone who has suffered a suspected cardiac arrest on a football pitch. The patient lives, with the saved minutes proving critical. At the time of writing, drones have already been used in search-and-rescue situations to save more than 880 people worldwide, according to drone company DJI.

Microsoft has launched a platform named Project AirSim to train the artificial intelligence systems of autonomous aircraft. Project AirSim is a flight simulator for drones that companies can use to develop and train software controlling them. The platform makes test flights possible in places that are usually considered risky, such as near power lines. Also, millions of flights can be simulated with this platform in the future, and companies can virtually see how the vehicle flies in the rain or how strong winds might affect its battery life. In a statement announcing the launch, Microsoft said that the platform would show the power of the industrial metaverse, a virtual world where businesses will build, test, and hone solutions and bring them into the real world.

Task allocation using a team or coalition of robots is one of the most important problems in robotics, computer science, operational research, and artificial intelligence. In recent work, research has focused on handling complex objectives and feasibility constraints amongst other variations of the multi-robot task allocation problem. There are many examples of important research progress in these directions. We present a general formulation of the task allocation problem that generalizes several versions that are well-studied. Our formulation includes the states of robots, tasks, and the surrounding environment in which they operate. We describe how the problem can vary depending on the feasibility constraints, objective functions, and the level of dynamically changing information. In addition, we discuss existing solution approaches for the problem including optimization-based approaches, and market-based approaches.

Abstract-- Tracking position and orientation independently affords more agile maneuver for over-actuated multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) while introducing undesired downwash effects; downwash flows generated by thrust generators may counteract others due to close proximity, which significantly threatens the stability of the platform. The complexity of modeling aerodynamic airflow challenges control (a) Conventional control allocation framework algorithms from properly compensating for such a side effect. Leveraging the input redundancies in over-actuated UAVs, we tackle this issue with a novel control allocation framework that considers downwash effects and explores the entire allocation space for an optimal solution. This optimal solution avoids downwash effects while providing high thrust efficiency within the hardware constraints. To the best of our knowledge, ours is (b) Proposed downwash-aware control allocation framework the first formal derivation to investigate the downwash effects on over-actuated UAVs.

If autonomous drones and flying taxis are going to thrive, they'll need AI that can handle a wide range of conditions -- and Microsoft thinks it can help build that AI. The company has unveiled a Project AirSim platform that helps manufacturers create, train and test the algorithms guiding autonomous aircraft. The Azure-based technology has virtual vehicles fly millions of flights through detailed simulations in a matter of seconds, gauging their ability to handle different obstacles and weather conditions. A drone maker can quickly find out if their machine will avoid birds, or use too much battery power countering strong winds. Developers can use trained AI "building blocks" to get started, so they won't need vast amounts of technical know-how.

Britain is to start testing Star Wars-style laser weapons that will be able to shoot down drones and rockets from up to six miles away. Defence company Raytheon UK has announced it will be opening an advanced laser integration centre in Livingston, West Lothian next year. It said the new European hub will focus on'testing, fielding and maintenance of defensive high-energy laser (HEL) weapons'. The weapons will be designed to take down drones, rockets, artillery and mortars with just a highly concentrated beam of light. Raytheon UK was given a demonstrator contract to deliver an HEL weapon system to the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) last September.