Elephant in the room - Quadcopters...

[LockH]

^^ Hehe... Pretty sure for a flying thingee yer gonna need three blades min. ie for stability. Looking for updates from Collin... from his hospital bed. (You know, if he can still speak, I mean.)

[TheBeastie]

A quadcopters last line of defense against tigers, a lithium battery pack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVj-u3j3KBk

[LockH]

^^ Hehe... Stay tuned. Russian quadcopter Scorpion-3 from Hoversurf takes on krew of Siberian tigers...

[whatever]

looks like a leg chopper, it would be amazing to see someone riding such device to its potential, somehow I think safety concerns will not allow it to market wide market, but great to see it developing.

[rborger73]

^^ Hehe... Stay tuned. Russian quadcopter Scorpion-3 from Hoversurf takes on krew of Siberian tigers...

Seems odd they wouldn't get screening to cover the blades. That was the only big danger of the testing. These are inevitable in consumer form. 3 years is my guess for the first to market.

[LockH]

Someone shot down a $200 drone with a $3M Patriot missile
(""That quadcopter that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against a Patriot," said US Army General David Perkins."):
https://www.cnet.com/news/someone-shot- ... ot-missile

(General starts in re "quadcopters" about 14 mins. in...)


(... and bit where he raves about ebikes as "military technology" edited out. Unfortunately.)

[LockH]

Dubai Police unveil flying bike, robotic vehicles
("Battery-operated ‘Hoversurf’ can be used for responding to emergency situations"):
http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/crime/duba ... -1.2102433

“It works on electricity and can fly at five metres height and carry a policeman during emergency situations and heavy traffic. The bike can also fly without a passenger and and can go up to 6 kilometres. It can fly for 25 minutes and can carry up to 300 kg of weight at a speed of 70km/h,” First Sergeant Ali Ahmad Mohammad from the VIP Security Department in Dubai Police told Gulf News.

[amberwolf]

And you don't even need Speed Racer to extend his sawblades out to chop up the one you're pursuing.

[LockH]

Watt?... "Search found 0 matches: Alauda"??? As in Australian startup Alauda Racing... :
https://www.alaudaracing.com/



Seen here: This Australian start-up is aiming to invent a new sport by 2020
("The Airspeeder Mark I, developed by Alauda over the past two years, looks like something out of Star Wars"):
http://www.business-standard.com/articl ... 006_1.html

[fechter]

Until someday whips one of these out:
https://hothardware.com/news/anti-drone ... of-the-sky

small_Drone_Shield.jpg (52.04 KiB) Viewed 6359 times

Drone Shield looks like a firearm, but it doesn't shoot bullets. Instead, it can send such an intense signal towards a drone that it will simply lose its bearings and float down towards the ground. This solution is much better than, say, a shotgun, because a shotgun can't typically hit a target 2 kilometers away, and if it does make impact, the drone isn't going to fare too well.

[LockH]

^^

[dirkdiggler]

Aluada looks like a good design. The CGI doesn't make it look real at this point, but they seem to have a good cockpit look going compared to the open motorcycle look others are going for.

[LockH]

Drone Boning - Make Porn Not War! [WARNING: NSFK] (...KIDS... maybe some Ladies also. Heck. Everybuddy might be "upset"...

[LockH]

(They say:)

designboom is based in milan, beijing and new york and has gained a global reach of 4 million readers and
450,000 newsletter subscribers.

founded in milan in 1999, designboom is the world's first and most popular digital architecture and design magazine. media is still the connective tissue of society, and compared to 1999, the internet has come a long way. during this time, creating a digital publication was still primarily the business of tech-savvy nerds but online publishing has gone from something abstract to being a central element in how many of us live and work. today, when people are searching for something, they’ll look it up online.

drone learning could be as simple as watching city bikes and cars do their thing:
https://www.designboom.com/technology/d ... 1-24-2018/

Starts:

drones may spend most of their time up in the sky but as buildings rise and urban areas grow denser it would be handy if they could navigate their way through the streets too. well researchers from the university of zurich and the national centre of competence in research have come up with a control system which could offer this whilst simplifying drone learning altogether. by using a deep learning algorithm they’ve dubbed dronet, the system enables them to autonomously navigate these types of settings, by showing them how cyclists and cars do their thing.

(ESB "Search found 0 matches: dronet")

[LockH]

flying poles direct the drone highway + driverless car system of the future:
https://www.designboom.com/technology/c ... 1-24-2018/



Ends:

in late december 2017, ANAS launched a 30-million-euro call for proposals, aimed at contractors, to build the new smart road infrastructure according to CRA’s design specifications. the smart highway program will be implemented on more than 2,500 kilometers of roads and highways.

[LockH]

(They say:)

Technological change, increased regulatory requirements and escalating cost pressures are combining to reshape transportation and shipping at a pace not seen in a century. This will lead to new ways of thinking and revolutionary breakthroughs in the industry.

The Future of Last-Mile Delivery Goes Beyond Vehicle Electrification:
https://www.trucks.com/2018/05/02/last- ... ification/

Starts:

Vehicles that bring goods to homes and businesses in the “last mile” of delivery will be the first to undergo electrification, but the sector itself is ripe for more than just powertrain disruption.

That’s the consensus of UPS, Chanje and Workhorse Group executives speaking at a panel on “the last mile hurdle” at the ACT Expo green vehicle conference in Long Beach, Calif., Wednesday.

There’s more to it than just building and deploying electric vehicles. To Chanje, a Los Angeles-based electric-vehicle manufacturer, the trucks are only a foot in the door.

Includes:

However, Chanje’s last mile vision is broader, he said. “If we think about a zero incremental cost mile, it starts with autonomous driving.”

Autonomous driving removes the driver – one of the largest operational costs – lessens accidents and allows more data integration. Paired with a solar energy production and a reduction in maintenance costs, the incremental mile costs almost nothing, Hausmann said.

“The thousandth mile doesn’t cost you any more than if you were running 500 miles,” he said. “Where we’re going is true last mile ecosystem disruption.”

... and:

But the Loveland, Ohio, company sees the future of last mile in drone technology. Duane Hughes, president and chief operating officer of Workhorse, said it used one of its UPS-owned delivery vans to deploy a package-delivering drone in Tampa, Fla., in February 2017.

“It was the first live parcel delivery via drone in the United States,” Hughes said.

UPS spends $1 per mile in fuel and maintenance costs to deliver a package with a gasoline version of the vehicle in the drone delivery. Using the electric vehicle drops the cost to 40 cents per mile. Using the drone to deliver a package reduces the cost to 3 cents per mile.

[LockH]

Hehe... NOAA Launches Drone Sailboats to Monitor El Nino

[LockH]

Using bebop2 drone for a video shot.

[TheBeastie]

I frequently have seen crap on TV saying Hydrogen cars can go 500km on just 1 kilogram of Hydrogen, but all the real-world ones go about 100KM on 1 kilo of Hydrogen, which is still pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mi ... _and_range

So I looked around and sure enough, there is a fair amount of proof of concept flying electric hydrogen aircraft or ("Flying cars").
But Hydrogen drones seems to be something where there is an active commercial market, some people need a lot more flying time/range.


https://youtu.be/u9DaHIecIc4?t=53s

One company called "Intelligent Energy" has their motto as "Fly for hours, not minutes"
http://www.intelligent-energy.com/our-products/uavs/
https://youtu.be/AHlrLU7kTys

Everytime I watch Elon Musk or a Tesla fan/EV youtube car reviewer talk about Hydrogen with swear words the more I am sure its the long-term future.

[LockH]

The Brampton Flight Centre will be conducting their RPAS Advanced Transport Canada Exam Preparation Course from February 1st – 3rd.

This course reflects the brand new Transport Canada guidelines.

For more information, please visit our website for a list of topics that our comprehensive course includes:

https://www.bramptonflightcentre.com/uav/

The cost of this course is $169.00 for the two days.

(I see they also have something they label as a Commercial UAV Program...

("The cost of this course is $569.00 for the three days.")

Guess it's a "happening" tech.

[LockH]

Boeing's self-flying taxi completes its first flight
("It's a significant step toward airborne cross-town travel."):
https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/23/boe ... tes-flight

[billvon]

I frequently have seen crap on TV saying Hydrogen cars can go 500km on just 1 kilogram of Hydrogen, but all the real-world ones go about 100KM on 1 kilo of Hydrogen, which is still pretty good.

Not really.

1KG of hydrogen is 12 cubic meters at atmospheric pressures. That's a cube 7 feet on a side - not practical on a car.

So they compress it. The Mirai, for example, has a range of 312 miles, about the same as the best EV's out there (and about half of something like a Prius Prime running on electric+gas.) To get that, they pressurize that hydrogen to 10,000 psi in special carbon fiber tanks. The tanks can hold 5kg of hydrogen, but weigh 87kG (about 190 pounds).

So you have to carry a LOT more weight with hydrogen - or go to much lower ranges.

There are five problems with hydrogen that don't have good solutions so far.

1) You need very heavy/expensive tanks to store it under pressure, because those tanks can't explode during collisions. (You would not want to be anywhere near a 10,000 PSI tank when it lets loose.)

2) That pressure has to be provided by external energy, which means you lose even more efficiency.

3) Hydrogen leaks out of everything due to its low molecular weight; it needs special (read - expensive) seals, valves and handling equipment to contain it.

4) Hydrogen is dangerous, much more dangerous than natural gas. Natural gas will combust only within a very narrow range of mixtures with air, which is why you don't have to purge every bit of air out of your home's gas lines before starting to use natural gas. Hydrogen will combust in almost any ratio to air, from 4 to 75%, meaning that even small leaks become explosion hazards. And it leaks very easily. And it's odorless which means it is hard to detect. (Natural gas adds odorants so you can smell a leak - but odorants contaminate fuel cells and so can't be used.)

5) (the big one) we don't have any. We can make it from coal or methane, but if we do that we might as well just use the coal or methane for fuel to start with; more efficient that way. If, some day, we get high temperature gas reactors and do thermal dissociation of water, we can start considering it as a fuel. Until then, it's just a (bad) way to store energy you have generated somewhere else.

[LockH]

There are five problems with hydrogen that don't have good solutions so far.

5) (the big one) we don't have any.

... and how much hydrogen would you estimate this planet has as water (H2O)? Hehe... Have used electricity to break down water as wires into test-tubes via electrolysis.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/h ... ectrolysis

[LockH]

Now flying ebike parts into Rochester, NY. (Saves US import duties..) Anybuddy want any parts?

[billvon]

... and how much hydrogen would you estimate this planet has as water (H2O)? Hehe... Have used electricity to break down water as wires into test-tubes via electrolysis.

Right. But that's like saying I have an awesome method to create gold out of almost nothing! I'll be a millionaire, right? To create a gram of gold, I just start with three grams of diamonds and . . .

The problem with using electricity to create hydrogen from water is that it uses electricity. And you'd be a lot better off using that electricity to just charge that EV in the first place. Converting it to hydrogen, storing it, transporting it, compressing it and then using it to power a fuel cell means you get about 1/3 of the energy you put in to making it.

Now, you could make a case that you'd only use hydrogen when you needed the extra range (say, 10% of the time) so the efficiency hit isn't so bad. Good point. However, in that case I would suggest that you take that hard-to-transport hydrogen and add a carbon atom to it. Now it's much easier to transport, store and use. And you can even take that carbon atom back off if you want to use a regular hydrogen fuel cell, or leave it attached and use a methane fuel cell.

And - second bonus here - we have methane, lots of it for now.