Drones

Amazon has laid out a proposal centered on slicing U.S. airspace into segments for different categories of unmanned delivery aircraft, while keeping them all away from airplanes.

UAS must be integrated into the NAS without reducing existing capacity, decreasing safety, negatively impacting current operators, or increasing the risk to airspace users or persons and property on the ground any more than the integration of comparable new and novel technologies.

Despite the company finding trouble in selling some aspects of its hardware like its TVs, the Japanese company has announced it is to get into the drones business with a new partnership between it and a company called ZMP.

The three companies are investigating specific uses of drone technology and examining the cost-effectiveness of these business ideas for the commercial use of logistics drones.

The supply chain industry today has focused on last-mile delivery as the primary application of drone technology, missing significant opportunities in addressing upstream logistics challenges.

Amazon said it was ready to start commercial drone deliveries as soon as regulations were in place - details about how Amazon's proposed delivery drones may work have now been published by the US Patent Office.

Raffaello D'Andrea, cofounder of Kiva Systems, discussed the future of robotics and the robotics industry with BCG.

In a robot lab at TEDGlobal, Raffaello D'Andrea demonstrates his flying quadcopters: robots that think like athletes, solving physical problems with algorithms that help them learn.

This is not an advanced radar or early-warning detection system - the company’s system simply compares sounds it hears to a database of drone sounds - when there’s a match, the system sends out an alert via text message or email.

US Federal Aviation Administration gives civilian drones the green light but Amazon's delivery plan is a no-no.

The FAA announced in a public statement that "Unmanned aircrafts like drones are not permitted within a 30 mile ring around the stadium."

In reaching its decision, the NTSB determined the FAA may apply the regulation that prohibits operation of an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner to unmanned aircraft.

Drones hold vast potential for streamlining and reducing the cost of insurance-related processes - from claims adjustment and risk-engineering, to post-catastrophe claims settlements for customers, to weeding out fraudulent agricultural claims.

Alec Momont of the Delft University of Technology in Delft, Netherlands has designed an unmanned, autonomous navigating mini plane that can quickly deliver a defibrillator on the spot where it is needed.

The University of Texas student detained during a Saturday night football game after flying a drone above the stadium has not been charged, but his drone was seized and now the incident is highlighting the gray area surrounding drone laws.