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Dubai aims to launch hover-taxi by July

#artificialintelligence

Dubai has tested a Chinese prototype of a self-driving hover-taxi, its transport authority said on Monday, with the aim of introducing the aerial vehicle in the emirate by July. The test of the one-man electric vehicle comes as the city state in the United Arab Emirates seeks to ensure a quarter of its means of transport are self-driving by 2030. The EHang 184 can travel on a programmed course at 100 kilometres an hour (60 mph) at an altitude of 300 metres (1,000 feet), the authority said in a statement. A passenger simply needs to select a destination for the autonomous taxi to take off, fly the route and touch down in the chosen spot monitored by a ground control centre, it said. The vehicle, made by Chinese drone manufacturer EHang, can recharge in two hours and make trips of up to 30 minutes.


A $40,000 Drone Failed To Lift Off. But There Was A Silver Lining

NPR Technology

A nonprofit group is testing this drone to see how fast it could get medications from a town to a remote village in Peru that's six hours away by boat. A nonprofit group is testing this drone to see how fast it could get medications from a town to a remote village in Peru that's six hours away by boat. If a snake bites you in a remote Amazonian village like Pampa Hermosa, Peru, and the local doctor is out of the right anti-venom, it might be wise to prepare some goodbyes. The nearest resupply, in a town called Contamana, is up to six hours away by riverboat, and you might not last that long. But you might last 35 minutes, the travel time between Pampa Hermosa and Contamana as the drone flies. A single unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV could dart over the lush canopy with a vial of lifesaving anti-venom, and a nonprofit called WeRobotics is trying to make that a reality.


Visual Object Tracking for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Benchmark and New Motion Models

AAAI Conferences

Despite recent advances in the visual tracking community, most studies so far have focused on the observation model. As another important component in the tracking system, the motion model is much less well-explored especially for some extreme scenarios. In this paper, we consider one such scenario in which the camera is mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone. We build a benchmark dataset of high diversity, consisting of 70 videos captured by drone cameras. To address the challenging issue of severe camera motion, we devise simple baselines to model the camera motion by geometric transformation based on background feature points. An extensive comparison of recent state-of-the-art trackers and their motion model variants on our drone tracking dataset validates both the necessity of the dataset and the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Our aim for this work is to lay the foundation for further research in the UAV tracking area.


Passenger drones will begin flying over Dubai this summer

Engadget

The single-rider, human-sized quadcopter that whipped CES 2016 into a frenzy could be carrying passengers as early as this summer. As the head of Dubai's Roads and Transportation Agency announced at the World Government summit today, the Chinese EHang 184 passenger drone will begin "regular operations" around the futuristic city in July of 2017. In fact, as the Associated Press reports, the EHang 184 has already been zipping around Dubai's Burj Al-Arab skyscraper, which happens to have a helipad floating a dizzying 689 feet off the ground. "This is not only a model," Roads and Transportation chief Mattar al-Tayer said. "We have actually experimented with this vehicle flying in Dubai's skies."


Russian drone video shows Islamic State destroying more of Palmyra; HRW blasts Aleppo gas attacks

The Japan Times

MOSCOW/UNITED NATIONS – Russia released drone footage Monday showing new destruction in Syria's historic town of Palmyra, which was recently recaptured by the Islamic State group, and warned that the militants could be planning the further demolition of antiquities. The Russian Defense Ministry says Syrian government forces are advancing toward the town as another battle for the ancient site looms. The video showed that the militants have badly damaged the facade of the Roman-era amphitheater and the Tetrapylon -- a set of four monuments with four columns each at the center of the colonnaded road leading to the theater. The video appears to show that only two of the 16 columns remain standing. IS militants have destroyed ancient sites across their self-styled Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, perceiving them as monuments to idolatry.


Drone footage shows new destruction in historic Syrian city of Palmyra

FOX News

Russia released drone footage Monday showing new destruction in Syria's historic town of Palmyra, which was recently recaptured by the Islamic State group, and warned that the militants could be planning the further demolition of antiquities. The Russian Defense Ministry says Syrian government forces are advancing toward the town as another battle for the ancient site looms. The video showed that the militants have badly damaged the facade of the Roman-era amphitheater and the Tetrapylon -- a set of four monuments with four columns each at the center of the colonnaded road leading to the theater. The video appears to show that only two of the 16 columns remain standing. IS militants have destroyed ancient sites across their self-styled Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, perceiving them as monuments to idolatry.


Chinese firm says self-flying craft will be flying in July

Daily Mail - Science & tech

A Chinese drone maker has revealed a giant quadcopter big enough to fit a passenger will be buzzing through the Dubai skyline in July. Dubbed EHang 184, the drone is described as the world's first'Autonomous Aerial Vehicle' for transporting people. The rider punches in a destination on a touch screen in front of the passenger seat, then the drone would fly there automatically. EHang is building the world's first'Autonomous Aerial Vehicle' for transporting people. The head of Dubai's Roads & Transportation Agency announced at the World Government Summit on Monday that the drone would be flying by July Mattar al-Tayer, the head of Dubai's Roads & Transportation Agency, made the announcement about it flight in Dubai today at the World Government Summit.


Russian drone footage show wide damage at Syria's Palmyra

Associated Press

This photo combo, made from footage taken from the Russian Defense Ministry official website, purports to show the Roman-era amphitheater on June 6, 2016, left, and on Feb. 5, 2017, right. Russia's defense ministry has released drone footage showing new destruction in Syria's historic town of Palmyra, which was recently recaptured by the Islamic State group, and warned that the militants could be planning the further demolition of antiquities. The video shows that the militants have badly damaged the facade of the amphitheater. This photo combo, made from footage taken from the Russian Defense Ministry official website, purports to show the Roman-era amphitheater on June 6, 2016, left, and on Feb. 5, 2017, right. Russia's defense ministry has released drone footage showing new destruction in Syria's historic town of Palmyra, which was recently recaptured by the Islamic State group, and warned that the militants could be planning the further demolition of antiquities.


Watch: In search of lost people, drones recognize and follow forest trails ZDNet

AITopics Original Links

AI might be a hot topic but you'll still need to justify those projects. When I was eight, I got lost in the woods on a camping trip with my mom. Rangers eventually found me and hiked me out, which is actually kind of miraculous. I was a couple miles from where they assumed I'd be, trudging haplessly through a remote backwoods area on unmarked terrain. Every year hundreds of thousand people get lost in the wild worldwide.


Report: Drone crashes in Iran

FOX News

TEHRAN, Iran – An Iranian semi-official news agency is reporting that a drone belonging to the Iranian navy has crashed in the southern port town of Jask. The Sunday report by Tasnim, which has ties to the military, said thick smoke rose from the crash site in downtown Jask, some 930 miles southeast of the capital Tehran. The report gave no additional details. Reports of crashed drones and ultralight planes are not uncommon in Iran, where weather conditions are often bad and safety measures often ignored.