It is no secret that human eyes have to watch hours upon hours of video footage to catch a glimmer of game-changing data. It’s a mundane, inefficient activity, performed by people with sophisticated technical skills who could be doing better things. If there was only a way to isolate just the important video of bad […]
With more drone surveillance comes more privacy issues. This patent application tries to mitigate the deleterious consequences to balance out the benefits and convenience of this new technology. Just like Google Maps fuzzes out faces and license plates, this invention aims to block out irrelevant data from surveillance footage taken not only by drones, but […]
In the world of UAV surveillance, the running joke is that the average operator chair has absorbed 17,000 farts. This punishment is a testament to the amount of man hours watching video screens with nothing happening, just to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. What if there is a better way, to have a […]
Helping automate airborne law enforcement, Palo Alto Research Center has secured a patent to catch speeders using drones. The invention resides in an algorithm called Point-Motion-Pairs (PMP) that establishes reference points on an automobile, calculates their rate of change, and snaps a photo of the license plate. This invention can be used not only on […]
The kind of mercenaries you need to maintain your Organic Farm certification. Suppose you farm something expensive and exotic, and have an infestation of bugs that likes to eat your inventory. Release the drones! This patent application talks mainly about targeted delivery of fertilizer and pesticide pellets, but it also mentions “beneficial insects”. The insect […]
Autorotation landing for a drone means a softer impact at crash.
Clockwise prop for the clockwise motor, counterclockwise prop for the counterclockwise motor Patent.
With the wrangling over whether it’s safe to fly a drone through fireworks (http://www.wired.com/2015/07/youre-thinking-flying-drone-fireworks/), Disney thought about the idea from a different angle. Their patent application mentions how dangerous fireworks can be, and a swarm of drones with lampshades is not. If you thought about flying your Phantom through fireworks was ballsy, try it with […]
The principle of a gimbal gets a new twist with this invention: The camera hardware is tethered on a balanced “bridge” straddling the flying hardware, and looks essentially like a teeter-totter. The part that does all the flying can move freely, and the bridge is balanced horizontally to maintain a steady shot. Further advantages are […]
If there is anything I’ve learned from my failures to land, it’s the fragility of cheap consumer drones. Aquacopters to the rescue! This thing is basically a sealed fortress, waterproof and shockproof. It can fly in bad weather, land and take off in water, and still take more punishment. The specification says it can be […]