Category: Software

Smokey the Drone Will Catch You Speeding

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 drones, but stationary cameras and cameras suspended on law enforcement helicopters. The algorithm examines the reference points, frame by frame, […]

Death From Above: Drone Delivers Mercenaries

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 angle is more interesting: there is always something that eats whatever is eating your plants. The enemy of my enemy. […]

Disney’s “Flixel” Drone will Replace Fireworks

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 a swarm of Flixels. It might feel like piloting the Millennium Falcon through a flaming asteroid belt. Here is an […]

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 […]