This week DJI, the world's leading drone manufacturer, announced a new policy removing enforcement of its "No Fly Zone" geofences in restricted areas. The sudden shift may lead to more drones hovering where they shouldn't, which could worsen a lingering national panic over flying objects in the sky. DJI, the China-based drone giant, says it will no longer enforce geofence barriers that prevent its products from flying over restricted areas like airports, wildfires, and government buildings. Though the company says these changes are intended to empower its users, they come amid a surge in drone sightings, some around critical infrastructure, that have stoked fears and fueled a growing tide of conspiracy theories. DJI's changes mean operators will have one less guardrail preventing them from flying into risky areas.

Auterion has developed a new onboard AI Node for drones and other mobile robots that adds supercomputer performance to the company's Skynode avionics and connectivity platform. AI Node is equipped with the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX, the world's smallest AI supercomputer for embedded and edge systems, which enables the direct processing of high bandwidth sensor data for better decision-making during operations. Compute-heavy AI and ML algorithms for object recognition, tracking and counting can be used, on mission, in advanced applications for public safety, security, and wildlife conservation, and across industry use cases. Immediate development and prototyping – Teams can plug and play with a wide range of interfaces to connect various payloads and sensors. By flexibly integrating into customer ecosystems and running Auterion OS with established developer workloads, users can easily develop applications on AI Node.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained increasing popularity across industries. Worldwide revenues for the AI market, including software, hardware, and services, are forecast to grow 40.2% annually, topping $997.77 billion by the end of 2028, according to a latest report by Grand View Research, an international consulting firm that helps Fortune 500 companies understand the global and regional business environment. Earlier, Connecticut-based Aquiline Drones Corporation (AD) announced the acquisition of ElluminAI Labs, LLC to support further development of its AI framework called Spartacus. This is AD's second strategic acquisition in the company's pre-IPO plan. It was just last month that AD completed the purchase of 50% of Netherlands-based AerialTronics, a renowned drone manufacturer, for $9.0M USD from Paris-based Drone Volt (ALDRV).

Fifty years ago, Mike Sanders watched with awe and anticipation as the crew of Apollo 11--Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins--splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Landing men on the moon and returning them safely to the earth was a seminal moment in the history of flight, and it had a profound effect on then 7-year-old Sanders, who now heads the Lone Star UAS Center of Excellence & Innovation at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. Looking back, Sanders says he never expected the day to come when he would be working with NASA on anything, let alone another chapter in the history of flight. But this year, he landed in the middle of one of the most important aeronautical projects of this generation: an effort to build a safe and effective unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) platform. In August, Texas A&M–Corpus Christi's Lone Star UAS Center of Excellence and its partners' workers stood alongside NASA scientists and engineers as they flew 22 small physical and digital drones above and between tall buildings in five areas of Corpus Christi. The low-altitude test culminated a five-year effort to learn what it would take to build a nationwide system for managing low-altitude drone traffic.

Verity Studios AG, a pioneer in autonomous drones, has launched an integration program for their Failsafe technology for quadcopters. The patented Failsafe solution provides powerful and cost-effective safety enhancements to any consumer and commercial quadcopter drone platform. This program allows drone manufacturers to easily implement the Failsafe algorithm into their drones as a standalone or complementary safety solution to guard against the most common cause of system-error crashes: propulsion system failures. Failsafe enables a future of safer drones – with more and more drones in the air, it hasn't come a moment too soon. The vast majority of consumer and commercial drones in operation today are quadrotors, which have been widely adopted due to their overall efficiency.

Verity Studios, which took precision drone swarm technology from ETH Zurich and turned it into a spectacular live event display system, has announced a round of Series A funding totaling US $18 million from Fontinalis Partners, Airbus Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Kitty Hawk. This is a lot of money for a company that most people may not know exists even if they view a Verity-powered drone show firsthand, but that's part of what makes Verity special: Everything they do is reliable, seamless, and safe, leading to experiences that have a truly mesmerizing effect. The reason we follow companies like Verity so closely, and the reason why we're happy when they get funded, is because they've managed to transition some fairly amazing robotics research into a successful business, which is a very difficult thing to do. The kinds of things that make Verity special come from over a decade of work at the Flying Machine Arena at ETH Zurich, led by Professor Raffaello D'Andrea, a lot of which we've covered in the past. For example, Verity's drones are fully redundant, able to recover from "a failed battery, a failed motor, a failed connector, a failed propeller, a failed sensor, or a failure of any other component ... through the duplication of critical components and the use of proprietary algorithms, which enable safe emergency responses to component failures."

Ehang, the Chinese drone manufacturer, broke its own Guinness World Record by piloting 1374 drones simultaneously above the city of Xi'an. In December 1180 drones were observed over Guangzhou and 1000 drones were flown in the same city in February last year. The drone was flown 853 feet above the city wall and presented an aerial display with 3937-foot length and 328-foot depth in the sky. The citizens and viewers recorded the amazing show on their phones and were left awe-inspiring. Impressing the thousands of citizens, Ehang have knocked off Intel's 1218 drone light show.

The government is planning to create a raft of new police powers as part of a crackdown on the civilian use of drones, the Department for Transport has announced. The new drone bill to be published in 2018 will allow police officers to order drone operators to ground their devices where necessary, alongside a series of new changes that will create a mandatory registry for larger unmanned aerial vehicles, such as those sold by Parrot or DJI. It could also include a ban on drones flying near airports or above 122 metres (400 feet), the government says, and a requirement for drone owners to use apps, rather than simple remote controls, to fly their aircraft, in order to ensure that the rules are always readily accessible and incorporated into the flight plan. The proposed bill will be accompanied by changes to the air navigation order that will introduce safety awareness tests for drone users, and the requirement to register with the government before flying drones that weigh more than 250g. Aviation Minister Baroness Sugg said: "Drones have great potential and we want to do everything possible to harness the benefits of this technology as it develops, but if we are to realise the full potential of this incredibly exciting technology, we have to take steps to stop illegal use of these devices and address safety and privacy concerns. "These new laws strike a balance, to allow the vast majority of drone users to continue flying safely and responsibly, while also paving the way for drone technology to revolutionise businesses and public services." Tim Johnson, policy director at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), said: "The CAA supports the safe development of drones in the UK.

Late last month, a federal court dismissed a lawsuit brought against a Kentucky man who shot a drone out of the sky when it allegedly flew over his property in 2015. The man, who used a shotgun to take out the drone, later dubbed himself the "Drone Slayer." The drone operator, who filed the lawsuit in 2016, argued that his DJI Phantom 3 quadcopter, flying at an altitude of some 200 feet, was in federally protected airspace and was in no way trespassing based on the Federal Aviation Administration's rules and even the trespassing laws of his state, which according to his suit prohibit a person from intruding, not a drone. In short, it wasn't because it thought this drone operator was incorrect; it was because it didn't deem the matter important enough to make a decision that might influence the delicate balance between federal and states' rights. And one of the justifications for that conclusion was that the FAA hadn't involved itself in the incident.

Drone Co-habitation Services operates a Phantom 3 commercial drone, one of 11 vehicles in the NASA field demonstration in Nevada. Drone Co-habitation Services operates a Phantom 3 commercial drone, one of 11 vehicles in the NASA field demonstration in Nevada. By 2020, an estimated 7 million drones could be zipping around the country delivering packages, taking photos, inspecting infrastructure or conducting search and rescue missions. But before that happens, they'll need a system in place to avoid crashing into each other -- or worse, passenger aircraft. NASA, along with the Federal Aviation Administration and an extensive list of industry partners, has been researching the requirements needed to establish a drone traffic management system. This summer, some of those ideas will be tested in the field.