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Robotics
FCC Clears VEX AIR Classroom Drone From Covered List As Exemption Tally Reaches Eleven Manufacturers, DJI Stays Blocked
The FCC‘s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau on June 4 exempted the VEX AIR Uncrewed Aircraft System from the Covered List, after the Department of War granted Innovation First International a Conditional Approval that runs through December 31, 2026.…
Pokémon Go Scans Quietly Trained the Navigation Tech Now Headed Into Military Drones
Hundreds of millions of Pokémon Go players spent years filming the streets, parks, and buildings around them to earn in-game rewards. Those roughly 30 billion environmental scans are now owned by Niantic Spatial, and they helped train a camera-based navigation…
Matternet Goes Public With $33M Reverse Merger
Matternet closed a $33 million private placement and went public last week through a reverse merger with shell company Los Altos Ventures Corp., now renamed Matternet Inc. The deal makes Matternet the first pure play drone delivery company on U.S.…
The New York Times Spent 10 Minutes On AI Farming And Forgot The Drones Spraying The Fields
The New York Times Magazine published a feature on June 5 about the technology rewiring American agriculture, and the one machine actually flying over these fields barely made the cut. Robotic milkers, laser weeders, and driverless tractors each got a…
The R7 Is A Chinese AI Drone-Killer You Can Buy In America. The FCC Says Hardware Like It Is Banned.
A Hong Kong seller is listing a Chinese-built autonomous interceptor drone on eBay for $6,999, shipping to U.S. addresses by UPS Ground, with payment plans starting around $336 a month. The listing, for a system called the R7 Portable AI…
Zipline Bets Nigeria Becomes Its Biggest African Market With 12 New Drone Hubs By 2028
Zipline plans to build 12 additional drone distribution centers across Nigeria by 2028, growing its network from three operational hubs to 15 and turning what began as a state-level vaccine pilot into a national logistics buildout. The California-based autonomous delivery…
Bat-Inspired Drone Navigates Smoke, Snow, Darkness
A team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute just pulled off something that sounds simple until you actually think about what cameras and lidar can’t do. They built a palm-sized quadrotor that flies by listening, the same way a bat does, and…
HOVERAir AQUA Launches In 50+ Countries Today, US Buyers Locked Out By FCC Foreign Drone Ban
HOVERAir AQUA, the waterproof self-flying camera from Zero Zero Robotics, went on sale globally today across more than 50 countries. American buyers cannot purchase it. In its outreach to DroneXL, HoverAir confirmed the AQUA is unavailable in the United States…
MIT and Penn Open-Source MIGHTY, a Drone Motion Planner That Cuts Out Six-Figure Commercial Software
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…
NYPD Spends $6.5M To Stand Up Counter-Drone Unit Built To Outlast The World Cup
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…
Autel Fights Back Against the FCC, Michigan Drone Bills Stall, and a Thermal Drone Saves a Life
Welcome to your weekly UAS News Update. I have three stories for you this week: Autel is fighting back against the FCC’s Covered List, the Michigan House passed two drone procurement bills while stalling on airspace restrictions, and a drones-for-good…
Autel Tells FCC The Drone Ban Rests On Secret Evidence And Borrowed Allegations Aimed At DJI
Autel Robotics filed a reply at the Federal Communications Commission arguing the agency added the company to its Covered List on the basis of classified material Autel was never allowed to see and technical complaints originally aimed at DJI. The…