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St. Louis is getting six police drones, and how the city approved them says as much as the program itself. On Wednesday its Board of Police Commissioners signed off on a Drone as First Responder program built on BRINC hardware, racing a funding deadline that had Mayor Cara Spencer calling the process rushed. The drones…
Researchers at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania have released MIGHTY, an open-source motion planner that lets drones react to obstacles in milliseconds using only onboard sensors and compute. The system, detailed in a paper accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and announced by MIT, jointly optimizes flight path and travel time in a…
The Wyoming Police Department is going from one drone to three. The Wyoming City Council approved $26,226 for two new aircraft on May 18 in a 5-1 vote, with one council member dissenting on surveillance grounds. The department flew its existing drone 131 times in 2025, and command staff say the additional units will close…
The New York City Police Department now has trained officers and certified equipment to electronically disable hostile drones in city airspace, a capability reserved until December for a small group of federal agencies. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed the department spent $6.5 million on drone mitigation gear at a May 21 press conference at One…
The Metro Nashville Police Department started flying drones over the Madison precinct on Tuesday, May 26, the first day of a Drone as First Responder trial that will run up to 45 flight days. Three Skydio aircraft are involved, on loan from the manufacturer at no cost to the city. Four FAA-certified officers operate the…
The Dallas Police Department’s new Drone as First Responder program made its first save on Thursday afternoon, one day after the program went live. A man was walking into rush-hour traffic on Interstate 45, a Skydio drone reached him before any patrol unit could, and a uniformed crew walked him off the freeway alive. The…
The SkyRover X1 just dropped to its lowest price ever, $449 at B&H, down from a $758 list. That is a $309 cut on a sub-250g foldable drone that flies 4K60 HDR, ships with 360-degree obstacle sensing, and walks into the FAA-registration-free zone by weighing exactly what a small bag of coffee weighs. The deal…
The U.S. Navy is working to pair its SEAL mini-submarines with uncrewed underwater vehicles, sending robotic scouts ahead of operators into the most defended stretches of any covert mission. Navy Captain Mike Linn confirmed the program at SOF Week 2026 in Tampa, where he heads the Naval Special Warfare program office. The goal is straightforward.…
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