Sony wants a bigger piece of the drone market. Today, the Japanese giant unveiled a project called Airpeak, which will "support the creativity of video creators to the fullest extent possible," according to a cryptic press release. That makes it sound like Sony wants to take on consumer-focused drone makers such as DJI, Parrot and Skydio. Which makes a lot of sense, given Sony's expertise in the compact and full-frame mirrorless camera markets. If you're a vlogger or independent filmmaker that already uses Sony gear, you might be tempted by a drone with similar technology.

If you want to know what the future of robot delivery looks like, then take a look at what Woowa Brothers is doing in Korea. The Aju Business Daily has a story up today about how Woowa is creating new partnerships that will allow its robots to pass through a building's security as well as take an elevator to travel between floors. In August of this year, Woowa's "Dilly" robots started making limited food deliveries to a multipurpose housing complex in Gwanggyo, Suwon city. But in this scenario, when it arrives, the robot waits at the entrance of the complex and the resident who placed the order must come down to retrieve their items. As Aju reports, Woowa has partnered with networking platform developer HDC I-Controls and Hyundai Elevator to make a Dilly's delivery more direct. With HDC I-Controls, Woowa's robot will be able to automatically get through a front door's security system and enter the building.

The coronavirus pandemic lockdown has highlighted a series of new social changes, but with it, a whole new set of software and hardware technologies have become our coping mechanisms. During the onset of the lockdown in March this year, businesses across a broad range of industries were forced to adapt rapidly in order to survive. Across the country, millions of staff began working from home and shoppers were unable to visit the high street. However, despite the disruption and challenges of Covid-19, a host of sectors are thriving. In this article, we will look at some of the major sectors that have benefitted from the'stay at home' culture and explore how the digital transformation of our daily lives has allowed us to cope with lockdown measures.

Plans to beam 5G signals to the public via drones that stay airborne for nine days at a time have been announced by two UK firms. They want to use antenna-equipped aircraft powered by hydrogen to deliver high-speed connectivity to wide areas. Stratospheric Platforms and Cambridge Consultants say they could cover the whole of the UK with about 60 drones. But telecoms analysts question whether the economic case for this scheme is quite as simple as it sounds. The Cambridge-based companies say they would run the service in partnership with existing mobile operators. They are already backed by Deutsche Telekom, which hopes to trial the technology in rural southern Germany in 2024.

Existing methods for object detection in UAV images ignored an important challenge - imbalanced class distribution in UAV images - which leads to poor performance on tail classes. We systematically investigate existing solutions to long-tail problems and unveil that re-balancing methods that are effective on natural image datasets cannot be trivially applied to UAV datasets. To this end, we rethink long-tailed object detection in UAV images and propose the Dual Sampler and Head detection Network (DSHNet), which is the first work that aims to resolve long-tail distribution in UAV images. The key components in DSHNet include Class-Biased Samplers (CBS) and Bilateral Box Heads (BBH), which are developed to cope with tail classes and head classes in a dual-path manner. Without bells and whistles, DSHNet significantly boosts the performance of tail classes on different detection frameworks. Moreover, DSHNet significantly outperforms base detectors and generic approaches for long-tail problems on VisDrone and UAVDT datasets. It achieves new state-of-the-art performance when combining with image cropping methods. Code is available at https://github.com/we1pingyu/DSHNet

With the immense promise of AI, the technology is gaining adoption across several industries. The use-case for ensuring industrial safety is also a great candidate for AI based solutions. AI models can be trained to optimize operations as well as to detect potential incidents or threats arising from poor conditions or equipment degradation. With AI, enterprises can not only respond to events in real-time but also prevent them from happening in the first place. For example, AI algorithms, when implemented in the mining industry, can monitor ambient conditions (hazardous gases, proximity to hazmat, health of equipment) and proactively detect the chances of hazards and take preventive action.

Drone footage taken by the National Trust has revealed the extent of the devastation being wrought on British woodlands by ash dieback, a deadly fungal infection. The shots taken this autumn show trees dying in Hanging Wood, part of the Trust-administered Hughenden Estate in Buckinghamshire. Some 300 ash trees on the estate will need to be felled this year in the interests of public safety -- with many more left to decay and create homes for wildlife. However, the Trust warned, this is a mere fraction of the 40,000-odd trees that will need cutting down in total across the lands they manage in the UK. Ash dieback -- though to have originated in Asia before spreading as a result of the global plant trade -- is caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus.

The DJI Mini was the best-selling drone ever for DJI, which dominates drone sales. So, what to do for an encore? How about higher resolution, as in the ability to shoot in 4K video, and a larger image sensor. Like the original Mini, the new Mini II is about the size of a smartphone, making it an easy fit in a backpack. Based on an early look, the Mini II is certain to be another big seller. DJI says the added price is for the higher resolution sensor and 4K video.

DJI's been on a bit of a tear of late, with a slew of new products in its handheld line. Today it's back to what we know the company for best: drones. The latest offering is the Mavic Mini 2, which, as the name suggests, is the sequel to DJI's smallest aircraft. Predictably, the Mavic Mini 2 adds some key features to the diminutive drone, but don't expect anything too fancy. This is, after all, DJI's most entry-level model and, by design, likely too small to support some of the more sophisticated hardware that gives its larger craft their more powerful abilities.

Washington – The U.S. State Department cleared the potential sale of four sophisticated U.S.-made aerial drones to Taiwan in a formal notification sent to Congress, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, the last step before finalizing a weapons sale that will further anger China. The $600 million deal would be the first such sale since U.S. policy on the export of sophisticated and closely guarded drone technology was loosened by the Trump administration. Reuters reported in recent weeks on the administration moving ahead with four other sales of sophisticated military equipment to Taiwan, with a total value of around $5 billion, as it ramps up pressure on China and concerns rise about Beijing's intentions toward the island. The U.S. State Department's formal notification gives Congress 30 days to object to any sales, which is unlikely given broad bipartisan support for the defense of Taiwan. The four MQ-9 SeaGuardian drones, made by General Atomic Aeronautical System, Inc. of San Diego, California, would come with associated ground stations, spares and training.