Month: June 2015

Parrot’s Bebop Prop Patent

Parrot, the French company that gave us the precursor consumer drone, has filed for a patent application on propeller mounting means. I know first-hand the frustration of seeing a prop fly off a spindle in mid-air, where it goes nobody knows, but it’s somewhere in the lawn. The bird in question is the new Parrot Bebop (http://www.parrot.com/ca/products/bebop-drone/) and it is fabulous. This invention at hand offers the following advantages: 1) Weight distribution of the prop […]

Anti-drone-jacking Software, Courtesy of a DARPA Contractor

You know that crop-dusting drone you have dusting your crops? I bet that sucker could carry a couple of nasty objects too, and it’s neat that you can feed GPS waypoints into its nav interface to have it fly anywhere you want. It’s not the plot of a movie if Insitu Inc. gets this patent. Citing some staggering statistics about the cost-effectiveness of drones (a chopper costs over $200/flight-hour to operate, a drone costs a […]

Disney’s Flying Eye Will Eavesdrop and Talk Back

Title: “Aircraft, Methods for Providing Optical Information, Method for Transmission of Acoustic Information and Method for Observing or Tracking an Object” US Patent Application Publication No: 20150078620 Filed (PCT): April 19, 2013 Published: March 19, 2015 Details: Did you know that Disney has a worldwide network of research facilities? Their Zurich branch has access to 21 Nobel laureates via the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH). As it happens, Disney Research and ETH are […]