Unmanned Systems

Scaling Manufacturing and Production for 'Data as a Service' Electric Drone

Fatema Hamdani, co-founder of Kraus Hamdani Aerospace, is the guest on this episode of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast.

Backup System Can Keep an Airplane on Course When It Cannot Rely on GPS Satellites

Dangling from a weather balloon 80,000 feet above New Mexico, a pair of antennas sticks out from a Styrofoam cooler. The antennas are listening for signals...

AI Helps UAVs Predict Oncoming Turbulence

Professor Animashree (Anima) Anandkumar and her team at The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a control strategy for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that uses reinforcement learning to adaptively learn how turbulent wind can change over time and then uses that knowledge to control the UAV based on what it is experiencing.

The Unusual Machines Approach to Low-Cost Drones and Drone Components

Unusual Machines CEO Allan Evans is the guest on this episode of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast.

Innovative Framework for Autonomous Robot Learning and Task Mastery

As children learn to ride a bike, adults can only guide them to a certain point. A large portion of developing this new skill depends on independent trial and error from...

Giving Autonomous Vehicles the Ability to Reason

Yen-Ling Kuo at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science is collaborating with a team at the Toyota Research Institute to build language representations of driving behavior that enable a robot to associate the meaning of words with what it sees by watching how humans interact with the environment or by its own interactions with the environment. Read on to learn more.

Shape Memory Alloy Tubular Structure

Applications include vehicle and aircraft tires, sports helmets, military equipment, and seals and couplings. Read on to learn more.

AI-Trained Vehicles Can Adjust to Extreme Turbulence on the Fly

In nature, flying animals sense coming changes in their surroundings, including the onset of sudden turbulence, and quickly adjust to stay safe. Engineers who design aircraft...

AUSA 2024: New Drones and Counter UAS Technology

Watch this video to see the new drones and counter UAS technology on display at AUSA 2024.

RTK and Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Vehicle Navigation & Guidance

This is an exciting time in robotics and vehicle automation, and sensors of all kinds provide critical data to drive this technology forward. But the sensor stack for AVs and ADAS is incomplete without a reliable source of absolute positioning. Read on to learn more.

Rising Star Award Winner 2024: Aerospace & Defense

Heather Cummings, Senior Engineer - Flight Controls & Autonomy, Sikorsky Aircraft, A Lockheed Martin Company in Middletown, Connecticut, is the 2024 Rising Star Award Winner for Aerospace & Defense.

My Opinion: Swarms are Fascinating and Important

My opinion: There is much to learn that is useful, practical, and important by studying swarms.

Autonomous Aerial Robots Prioritize Rooms in Multiroom Exploration

An estimated 100 earthquakes worldwide cause damage each year. This damage includes collapsed buildings, downed electrical lines and more. For first responders, assessing...

Videos of the Month

See the videos of the month, including one on ETH’s student-built drone, which will operate free of external and visible propellers; one on a soft robotic hand that combines vision, motor-based proprioception, and soft tactile sensors to identify, sort, and pack a stream of unknown objects; one on the Environmental Toolkit for Expeditionary Operations; and one on how integrating AI into robotic systems can enhance their capabilities and enable them to perform more complex tasks.

An Autonomous Drone Based on Animal Brains

A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has developed a drone that flies autonomously using neuromorphic image processing and control based on the workings of animal brains.

How the Air Force Is Using AI to Fix Supply Chain Challenges

Art Sellers, SparkCognition Government Systems Interim President and General Manager, joins the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast to explain the new partnership using AI to improve supply chain efficiency for the U.S. Air Force.

Digital Transformation Updates at Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon

Executives from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon provide updates on their adoption and development of artificial intelligence and other new digital engineering technologies.

What Is Generative AI at the Edge?

Tyler Saltsman, CEO of EdgeRunner AI, joins the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast to explain how the aerospace and defense industry can adopt generative AI at the edge.

Ant Insights Lead to Robot Navigation Breakthrough

Have you ever wondered how insects are able to go so far beyond their home and still find their way home? The answer to this question is not only relevant to biology but also to making the...

Stable AI-Controlled Systems for Safe Autonomous Motion

Neural networks have made a seismic impact on how engineers design controllers for robots, catalyzing more adaptive and efficient machines. Still, these brain-like machine-learning...

People, Not Design Features, Make a Robot Social

Researchers who develop social robots — ones that people interact with — focus too much on design features and not enough on sociological factors, like human-to-human interactions, the...

5Ws of the Neuromorphic AI Drone

A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has developed a drone that flies autonomously using neuromorphic image processing and control based on the workings of animal brains.

Videos of the Month

See the videos of the month, including one on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft; one on the Dragonfly rotorcraft and how it was tested multiple times by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in wind tunnel facilities; one on a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory going to the Haughton Impact Crater on Devon Island, Canada — a frigid environment similar to Mars; and one on engineers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Naval Center for Space Technology recently completing robotic payload component level testing.

How Much Do You Know About Unmanned Underwater Vehicles?

How much do you know about unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs)? Test your knowledge with this quiz.