Russia has been manipulating global satellite positioning (GPS) locations on a vast scale in order to protect Vladimir Putin from drones, according to a report. The Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a Washington-based research organisation, undertook a year-long investigation ending in November 2018 into the manipulation of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). Their report, which drew upon publicly available satellite data, found that the tactic was used in Russia, the Ukraine and Syria, with some incidents of spoofing, correlating closely with the movements of Putin. We'll tell you what's true. You can form your own view.

The Air Force wants to see if AI-powered autonomous drones can help human pilots better perform their mission. In a press release, the Air Force said it was seeking input from the tech industry in a new AI initiative for autonomous drones it calls Skyborg. Still in its planning stages, the Air Force is looking for market research and concept of operations analysis for Skyborg to get a sense of what technologies are out there for such a fleet. It is seeking to launch protoypes of the autonomous drones as early as 2023. What exactly would the autonomous drones under Skyborg do?

For a pilot, there really is no substitute for knowing what's in front of you. In a drone, that capability is known as detect and avoid, and so far, no drone has cleared the bar. Sabrewing, a startup in Camarillo, Calif., may well be the first to do it. It's working on a cargo-carrying drone that's due to begin test flights in 2020. "Even the military does it only in a kind of rudimentary way, say with a camera system; our system has to provide a way for the aircraft to autonomously avoid obstacles," says Ed De Reyes, the chief executive of Sabrewing.

UPS will leverage drones to deliver medical samples in the first FAA-backed and continuous commercial deployment of drone technology in America. According to UPS, an autonomous drone -- Matternet's M2 quadcopter -- will travel between locations at WakeMed's campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, flying distances of up to 12.8 miles along a fixed, pre-determined route. Currently, the samples are delivered on the ground via courier cars, says UPS, making the shipments susceptible to road traffic. The use of drones will both increase efficiency and lower costs, the company says. Samples are loaded onto the drone which then flies a predetermined route to a landing pad located within the hospital.

Autonomous delivery drone networks are coming to the US in earnest. UPS and Matternet are launching a drone "airline" that will use the robotic aircraft to carry medical samples between WakeMed's health care facilities in Raleigh, North Carolina. The drone of choice (an M2 quadcopter) can only carry up to 5lbs at distances as long as 12.5 miles, but it should still be faster, cheaper and more consistent than the current system of driving samples across town using cars. They won't have to deal with traffic snarls, after all. This isn't the flexible drone delivery service you might have imagined.

The US military is testing delivery drones that can transport supplies over long distances and be thrown away after each use. Made of cheap plywood, the bigger version of the two gliders being tested can carry over 700 kilograms, or roughly 1800 pounds. As reported in IEE Spectrum, the scientists at Logistic Gliders, Inc. revealed that their gliders just successfully completed a series of tests with US Marines. If cleared for mass production, the LG-1K and its bigger counterpart, the LG-2K, could cost as little as a few hundred dollars each. Using unmanned aircraft for delivery is an idea both the military and private sector have explored for years. Traditional aircraft guzzle fuel, cost money to purchase and maintain and require a human pilot.

Two years ago, we spotted an interesting delivery drone concept at a military expo in Washington, D.C., called TACAD, or TACtical Air Delivery. The idea was to use gliders made out of cheap, disposable materials to deliver a substantial amount of supplies over long distances. You'd have to launch these gliders from larger aircraft, but they'd be able to deliver hundreds of kilograms of supplies over a hundred kilometers away, and then they'd just be left where they landed, simple as that. Like many concepts that we see at trade shows, we didn't necessarily expect much to come of this idea, but we're delighted to report that the folks behind it--Logistic Gliders Inc. (LGI), based in Dixon, Calif.--have recently concluded a successful series of flight tests with the U.S. Marine Corps. There are two different kinds of gliders that LGI is working on: The LG-1K, which can carry about 300 kg, and the larger LG-2K, which can carry over 700 kg.

UPS is teaming up with autonomous delivery drone startup Matternet to experiment with using drones to deliver medical supplies, the companies announced on Tuesday. Starting today, the supplies will be delivered via Matternet's M2 quadcopters to WakeMed hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. The drone delivery program will be overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration and the North Carolina Department of Transportation. It will be small at first: Matternet's drones can only carry payloads of up to five pounds over distances of up to 12.5 miles. Here's how the companies describe the delivery program: Throughout the WakeMed program, a medical professional will load a secure drone container with a medical sample or specimen – such as a blood sample – at one of WakeMed's nearby facilities.

The paper presents the study and implementation of the ground detection methodology with filtration and removal of forest points from LiDAR-based 3D point cloud using the Cloth Simulation Filtering (CSF) algorithm. The methodology allows to recover a terrestrial relief and create a landscape map of a forestry region. As the proof-of-concept, we provided the outdoor flight experiment, launching a hexacopter under a mixed forestry region with sharp ground changes nearby Innopolis city (Russia), which demonstrated the encouraging results for both ground detection and methodology robustness.

Technologies Inc. aims to release a mass-market flying motorcycle by 2022, Chief Executive Officer Shuhei Komatsu said. Technologies, which mainly develops small drones, hopes to sell the product, called a "hover bike," in emerging economies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia with poor road infrastructure. Many companies around the world are developing flying cars. Technologies is among those trying to enter the market. "We'll create a (flying) bike first, in order to get flying cars widely used in society eventually," Komatsu said.