Conservation, medical delivery, disaster response — the missions where drones save the day.
Two Harvard mechanical engineering seniors have built a fixed-wing VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) drone from scratch to help marine biologists locate sperm whales tagged with VHF (very high frequency) transmitters off the coast of Dominica, according to a project profile published by Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Kuma McCraw…
Fifteen years after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, palm-sized drones have flown inside the Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi and reached what engineers had been trying to see since the meltdown began: the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel, surrounded by what TEPCO believes is…
As Seneca deploys autonomous firefighting drones to Aspen, Colorado, the industry watches to see if 100-pound suppressant payloads can stop wildfires before human crews arrive. A look at the tech, the $60M backing, and the hard reality of wind constraints in aerial firefighting.
A teenager called his dad from a cliff saying he was sliding and was going to fall. His father, a retired firefighter and paramedic, drove 90 minutes and stayed on the phone the whole way. A Coast Guard helicopter and a DJI drone brought his son home, as Beach Connection reported. “Dad, I’m Sliding on…
Santa Fe first responders located a 47-year-old man unconscious and not breathing near Las Acequias Park after receiving a call Wednesday afternoon.
In 2024, land mines and unexploded ordnance killed 1,945 people and injured 4,325 more. Ninety percent were civilians. Nearly half were children. Demining crews removed 105,640 mines that same year. The math is brutal, and it isn’t close. The Oldest Problem in Modern Warfare At least 57 countries still have live antipersonnel mines buried in…
Two people were trapped nearly 1,000 feet in the air in Texas. The rescue took four hours, a team of extraordinary firefighters, and one drone doing a job nobody talked about, as KLTV reports. 925 Feet Up and Nowhere to Go It started as a Saturday morning balloon flight in Gregg County, Texas. It ended…
A dog named Sweetie spent the night alone, injured, and hidden in a freezing retention pond. A drone found her in minutes. This is exactly why DFR programs exist, as Oregon Live reports. Sweetie’s Long Night in Happy Valley The call came in around noon on Friday. A dog had slipped through a fence near…
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