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Robinson Unmanned's Helius pocket drone, originally promised Q4 2025 delivery at $4,499, is still a prototype with production now slipping to mid-2026.
Manna Air Delivery CEO Bobby Healy tells XPONENTIAL Detroit he is moving Manna's manufacturing from Dublin to Tulsa and targeting 2,000-3,000 US jobs.
FAA ATO COO McIntosh at XPONENTIAL Detroit: drones treated as aircraft, operators as pilots; new radar data sharing test program coming in two weeks.
AUVSI's Robbins defends the broader-than-asked FCC drone ban at XPONENTIAL Detroit; Pentagon's Cadenazzi confirms Section 805 enforcement pilots for 2026.
HYFIX Spatial Intelligence is rolling out its H1P Positioning, Navigation, and Open-Compute Module for small unmanned systems, with samples and evaluation kits available immediately. The Santa Clara, California company is showcasing the H1P at AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2026 in Detroit this week, booth 34005. It’s the first product built on the company’s H1 Autonomous Systems Chip,…
Greg from Pilot Institute walks through the RTH settings, wind checks, battery margins, and crash recovery steps for flying your drone safely over water.
The aircraft that once made aviation history by circumnavigating the globe on sunlight alone is now at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Solar Impulse 2, the record-setting solar plane built by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, crashed during an autonomous test flight on May 4 after losing power. No one was on board,…
China just moved a hydrogen fuel cell system for drones from the lab to the field. Researchers at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, completed a successful demonstration flight and passed a national scientific appraisal that puts the technology on the path to commercial deployment, as reported by…
Oklahoma City police handled a potentially deadly standoff last month without a single injury using two tools that are becoming standard equipment in modern patrol operations: a drone and a tactical robot, as reported by Officer. The April 8 incident on SW 96th Street is another data point in a pattern that’s accelerating across American…
The U.S. Army has a new answer to the drone threat, and it involves sending a drone to take care of it. Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division recently trained with the Bumblebee V1 counter-drone system at Fort Drum, New York, in a session organized by Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Department of War’s…
The inclusion of a commercial heavy-lift drone in a MEDEVAC demonstration during this exercise signals something specific: the Army is actively testing
Another defense tech company has made the call on California. Knightwerx, a tactical drone developer that built its name making compact military UAS, has moved its headquarters from Camarillo to Scottsdale, and it’s already hiring, as Hoodline reported. The move drops the company squarely into the Phoenix metro’s expanding defense manufacturing corridor just as it…
DJI just announced the winners of the 11th Annual SkyPixel Photo and Video Contest, and if you were feeling reasonably good about your drone footage, I’d recommend not scrolling too far. The competition drew nearly 95,000 submissions from 96 countries, with a prize pool worth over $200,000. The results are, frankly, humbling. The Gate: The…
A Detroit-based drone company just turned a very mundane problem into a surprisingly sophisticated aerospace application. Birdstop has deployed autonomous drones at two commercial truck parking sites in Detroit, using AI and computer vision to give drivers real-time visibility into which spots are open, as reported by Traffic Technology Today. It’s a pilot program. It’s…
The U.S. Navy just ran a live exercise off Key West testing whether drones and AI can find, track, and engage suspected drug trafficking vessels in real time, as reported by the US Naval Institute. The exercise wasn’t a concept demonstration or a PowerPoint briefing. It was a working kill chain with real hardware, real…
Let’s get one thing out of the way immediately: the DJI Flip is not a pretty drone. It looks like someone strapped a camera to a tiny bicycle and called it a day. I’ve stared at it from multiple angles hoping it would grow on me, and it hasn’t. But here’s the thing — it…
South Carolina lawmakers are closing a gap that’s been frustrating law enforcement for years. A bill dubbed the South Carolina Drone Regulation and Public Safety Act cleared a Senate committee unanimously this week, following a unanimous House vote last month, as the South Carolina Daily Gazette reported. If it becomes law, the state will finally…
Paladin Drones is offering public safety agencies a 30-day pilot of its Drone as First Responder system for $8,000, with the entry fee credited back against a full contract for up to three consecutive 30-day periods. The Houston company announced the offer on X Monday, telling agencies to book a demo before June 30 to…
A Ukrainian drone operator says his unit is now paying more than eight times what it used to for the fiber optic spools that feed their jam-proof FPV drones. Dimko Zhluktenko, co-founder of the Dzyga’s Paw charity fund and now serving with Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said in a May 10 post on X that…
The DJI Air 4 has surfaced inside a Chinese drone flight-reporting app, sitting in a dropdown menu of selectable aircraft alongside the already-shipping Insta360 Antigravity A1. The screenshot, posted Monday by drone leaker Igor Bogdanov on X with the caption “Caught…Air 4,” is the first known appearance of the unannounced model in a regulatory-adjacent piece…
The Federal Communications Commission‘s Office of Engineering and Technology released Public Notice DA 26-454 on Friday, May 8, 2026, extending its waiver for software and firmware updates to previously authorized foreign-made drones, UAS critical components, and consumer routers until at least January 1, 2029. The earlier deadlines were January 1, 2027 for drones and March…
Germany’s largest defense contractor and its biggest mobile carrier announced a joint drone defense shield on Monday, combining Rheinmetall’s air defense hardware with Deutsche Telekom’s cellular network and radio frequency sensors to protect cities and critical infrastructure. The companies will present the system at the AFCEA security trade show in Bonn this week. The partnership…
DJI has set the date and venue for the Osmo Pocket 4P reveal. The company posted matching teasers Monday from its global and Japan X accounts confirming a Cannes, France event on May 14, 2026 at 17:00 CEST. That date lands inside the 79th Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 12 to May 23.…
The portable camera market apparently decided to have a group chat moment. In the span of a few weeks, five new pocket and compact cameras either launched, teased, or leaked their way into the conversation. If you create content alongside your drone work, strap in. DJI Osmo Pocket 4: The One That Started It DJI…
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