Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are versatile platforms widely used in applications such as surveillance, search and rescue, and urban air mobility. Despite their potential, the critical phases of take-off and landing in uncertain and dynamic environments pose significant safety challenges due to environmental uncertainties, sensor noise, and system-level interactions. This paper presents an integrated approach combining vision-based sensor fusion with System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) to enhance the safety and robustness of VTOL UAV operations during take-off and landing. By incorporating fiducial markers, such as AprilTags, into the control architecture, and performing comprehensive hazard analysis, we identify unsafe control actions and propose mitigation strategies. Key contributions include developing the control structure with vision system capable of identifying a fiducial marker, multirotor controller and corresponding unsafe control actions and mitigation strategies. The proposed solution is expected to improve the reliability and safety of VTOL UAV operations, paving the way for resilient autonomous systems.

The general problem of planning feasible trajectories for multimodal robots is still an open challenge. This paper presents a whole-body trajectory optimisation approach that addresses this challenge by combining methods and tools developed for aerial and legged robots. First, robot models that enable the presented whole-body trajectory optimisation framework are presented. The key model is the so-called robot centroidal momentum, the dynamics of which is directly related to the models of the robot actuation for aerial and terrestrial locomotion. Then, the paper presents how these models can be employed in an optimal control problem to generate either terrestrial or aerial locomotion trajectories with a unified approach. The optimisation problem considers robot kinematics, momentum, thrust forces and their bounds. The overall approach is validated using the multimodal robot iRonCub, a flying humanoid robot that expresses a degree of terrestrial and aerial locomotion. To solve the associated optimal trajectory generation problem, we employ ADAM, a custom-made open-source library that implements a collection of algorithms for calculating rigid-body dynamics using CasADi.

Residents in northwest Arkansas will now see drones soaring through the sky that are delivering goods to people's homes who ordered from the local Walmart Neighborhood Market. Walmart and its partner, drone-maker Zipline, rolled out the service on Thursday, and said it will ship'thousands of products' to customers within a 50-mile radius of the store in Pea Ridge. The companies designed a'first-of-its kind' 25-foot-tall platform, located the back of the Walmart, which serves as the infrastructure for take-off and landing for drones. Orders are placed through the Zipline app, which are collected by Walmart employees who then hand them off to Zipline staff, who prepare the aircraft for launch. Residence in northwest Arkansas will now see drones soaring through the sky to deliver goods to people's homes who ordered from the local Walmart Neighborhood Market Walmart has a made huge push into the drone delivery market over the years, as it has conducted pilot programs in several states such as North Carolina and Texas.

Flying cars may be more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles when used to make journeys of over 22 miles (35 kilometres), reports new research. For shorter commutes, however, George Jetson and his boy Elroy might be better staying on the ground if they want to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers found flying cars that take-off and land vertically could cut down greenhouse gas emissions by half compared to using regular ground-based vehicles. Flying cars may be more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles when used to make journeys of over 22 miles (35 kilometres), reports new research. Our transportation systems face increasing demand and congestion and is challenged with reducing the greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Futuristic hybrid drones with both a helicopter and airplane mode are set to revolutionise warfare, experts claim. Engineers have unveiled an ambitious new concept for adaptable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which are so agile they can take off and land like a helicopter and still fly like plane. Experts believe the drones of the future, which will alternate between fixed-wing flight and rotary-wing flight, could be deployed by soldiers in the next few decades. The new technology concept – named Adaptable UAVs – can alternate between the two different flight modes in the same mission. When in rotary wing mode the UAVs can be launched and recovered from battlefields and can also hover and achieve vertical take-off and landing.