On Oct. 12, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California conducted a drone race in which they timed laps through a twisting obstacle course as they raced UAS controlled by artificial intelligence (A.I.) against a world-class drone pilot named Ken Loo. The race capped off two years of research into UAS autonomy funded by Google. Google was interested in JPL's work with vision-based navigation for spacecraft, which are technologies that can also be utilized by UAS. To showcase the team’s progress, a timed trial between JPL’s A.I. and Loo was set up.  

The use of unmanned aircraft systems in the commercial domain is now a given, as a host of industries see the benefits of operating an autonomous vehicle to support their businesses. Some years ago, the debate surrounding this proliferation centered around whether UAS would in fact be disruptive enough to have an impact on these commercial operations, but now it is more a case of how their use will expand further and what the technology will be able to do next, and almost more importantly, what framework will be utilized to support this growth. One roadblock to this is the expectation that the regulatory framework that supports an increase in the commercial use of UAS has to be perfect, and will not allow for any misuse of these types of aircraft.

Madrid, Spain’s Alpha Unmanned Systems (AUS), which manufactures a gasoline-powered helicopter UAV called the Alpha 800, has announced a technology partnership with Sightec, which is an Israel-based developer of video image stabilization and object detection software. “We are delighted to integrate our technology onto the Alpha 800 platform,” says Roy Shmuel, CEO of Sightec. “With 2.5 hours of flight time, our image stabilization system makes the image analysis work very easy and accurate. Alpha is a reliable partner with a world-class helicopter platform and we are very pleased to work together.”

UAVOS Inc. has announced that it completed an aerial inspection of the refinery production infrastructure in Kazakhstan—located in Eastern Europe—using an unmanned complex based on the UVH-29E gasoline-powered helicopter. Equipped with a gyro-stabilized platform with a FullHD day camera, the UAV completed all of its objectives, including the monitoring task with a simultaneous real time video image transmitting, and it also performed a survey of the flare units. “It is one of our first projects in Eastern Europe to replace traditional methods of inspection in the oil and gas and energy sectors with robotic technologies,” says Vadim Tarasov.