DECEMBER 30, 2021 – Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane), Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge (MTB) recently announced the winners of the Artificial Intelligence for Small Unit Maneuvers (AISUM) Prize Challenge. EpiSys Science, Inc. (Episci) took first place and Draper, Inc. (Draper) took second place. According to their website, Episci is "a multidisciplinary innovation company that develops next-generation autonomous technologies for defense, aerospace, and commercial applications." Draper's website says the organization "serves our nation's interests and security needs; advances technologies at the intersection of government, academia, and industry; cultivates the next generation of innovators; and solves the most complex challenges." "The overall goal of this challenge was to move the technology needle," said Amy Ross, Program Manager for the AISUM Prize Challenge.

As new year approaches, crowds around the world may be expecting whizzes and bangs to light up the sky. 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. They are also being embraced at a local level: more than 1,000 people watched a drone display at Mercia Marina in Derbyshire to celebrate Bonfire Night this year. Ollie Howitt, the creative coordinator at SkyMagic, which used a fleet of 300 drones to create a display for the mayor of London's new year celebration last year, said demand had increased substantially, something the pandemic has helped accelerate. She added that drones were increasingly able to fly in greater density and for longer.

Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane), Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge (MTB) recently announced the winners of the Artificial Intelligence for Small Unit Maneuvers (AISUM) Prize Challenge. EpiSys Science, Inc. (Episci) took first place and Draper, Inc. (Draper) took second place. According to their website, Episci is "a multidisciplinary innovation company that develops next-generation autonomous technologies for defense, aerospace, and commercial applications." Draper's website says the organization "serves our nation's interests and security needs; advances technologies at the intersection of government, academia, and industry; cultivates the next generation of innovators; and solves the most complex challenges." "The overall goal of this challenge was to move the technology needle," said Amy Ross, Program Manager for the AISUM Prize Challenge.

On a congested sidewalk next to a busy mall in Shenzhen, a 20-something woman uses a smartphone app to order a milk tea on Meituan, a major food delivery company. In under ten minutes, the pearl-white drink arrives, not on the back of one of the city's ubiquitous delivery bikes, but descending from the cloudy heavens, in a cardboard box on the back of a drone, into a small roadside kiosk. The only thing the scene is missing is a choir of angels. Over the past two years, Meituan, one of China's largest internet companies, has flown 19,000 meals to 8,000 customers across Shenzhen, a city with close to 20 million people. The pilot program is available to just seven neighborhoods, each with a three-kilometer stretch, and only from a select number of merchants.

A successful deployment of drones provides an ideal solution for surveillance systems. Using drones for surveillance can provide access to areas that may be difficult or impossible to reach by humans or in-land vehicles gathering images or video recordings of a specific target in their coverage. Therefore, we introduces a data delivery drone to transfer collected surveillance data in harsh communication conditions. This paper proposes a Myerson auction-based asynchronous data delivery in an aerial distributed data platform in surveillance systems taking battery limitation and long flight constraints into account. In this paper, multiple delivery drones compete to offer data transfer to a single fixed-location surveillance drone. Our proposed Myerson auction-based algorithm, which uses the truthful second-price auction (SPA) as a baseline, is to maximize the seller's revenue while meeting several desirable properties, i.e., individual rationality and incentive compatibility while pursuing truthful operations. On top of these SPA-based operations, a deep learning-based framework is additionally designed for delivery performance improvements.

A new report from Drone Industry Insights says the commercial industry can expect progress globally. DRONEII Editor Ed Alvarado writes that around the world, drone regulations – and the regulatory framework – are evolving rapidly. "This is a very welcome development given that the drone industry sees this as the most important driving factor. The movement on drone regulation in 2022 is global. In Korea, significant movement towards urban air mobility is underway: continuing the progress made this year with trial flights and the government committment to an early implementation of passenger VTOL aircraft.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. President Biden's administration has been much less aggressive with U.S. military air power in 2021 than former President Donald Trump was last year, with strikes falling 54% as of mid-December. "The biggest take-home is that Biden has significantly decreased US military action across the globe," reads a report released Wednesday by Airwars, a not-for-profit organization that tracks military actions and civilian causalities across the world. It added that the drop in strikes has resulted in "far lower numbers of civilians allegedly killed by the US strikes."

SEEKER-30 AI-TIR supports dual sensors object identification and tracking based on deep learning algorithm and ECO tracking algorithm. It has an AI object identification and tracking module, with which SEEKER-30 AI-TIR can realize car, human automatic recognition and tracking by choosing the corresponding tracking mode. SEEKER-30 AI-TIR can be controlled via sbus, serial port. Functions like target tracking or pseudo-color pattern switching can be realized via sbus control. SEEKER-30 AI-TIR supports Max.128G storage.

Aviation chiefs have urged people to fly drones safely to protect low-flying air ambulances, which are expected to make around 1,000 lifesaving missions during the festive period. Jonathan Nicholson, the assistant director of communications, at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), asked drone users to fly safely and remain alert for low-flying air ambulances. With thousands of drones expected to be given as presents this Christmas, Mr Nicholson said: 'With more than 400,000 registered drone owners across the UK, and more expected to be added during the festive period as people receive new drones for Christmas, we're asking all drone users to fly safely and to especially be on the lookout for low-flying helicopters. There have been close to 500 close calls between drones and aircraft in the past ten years, with up to 125 in a single year. Air ambulances often fly below the 400ft maximum height for drone flying.

Engineers are developing software for lighter-than-air spacecraft that might be able to explore the clouds of Venus, an environment that could harbour alien life. These hybrid machines use buoyancy and aerodynamic lift to control their altitude – with the substantial benefit that during the day they can collect energy from the Sun in order to move while conserving power by floating during the night. It is hoped that the aerobots would be able to cruise for several months to one year. This buoyancy of the vehicle also means that it would be prevented from descending more than 50 kilometres from the surface of Venus. The temperature of the planet can reach approximately 475 degrees Celsius, and has melted numerous probes sent to it already.