Lifeboat Foundation

Just How Much Did ‘Back to the Future’ Get Right about October 2015? 2:19.

In “Back to the Future Part II,” Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel from 1985 to October 21, 2015, to find a world filled with flying cars, hoverboards and self-drying jackets.

Those predictions didn’t exactly pan out, although people are working on each of those concepts. (Screenwriter Bob Gale did get a lot of things — from drones to fingerprint scanners — right, as he told TODAY earlier this year.)

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Amazon says drones can deliver packages weighing up to 5 pounds within 30 minutes.

“In time, there will be a whole family of Amazon drones,” says narrator Jeremy Clarkson, the former BBC “Top Gear” cohost who is working on a similar show for Amazon. “Different designs for different environments.”

Continue reading “See The Amazon Drone That Will Deliver In 30 Minutes Or Less” »

“Amazon delivered a lovely update on its ‘Prime Air’ project today — almost exactly two years after it showed the first iteration of its drone.”

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We’ve seen Project Wing, the air-delivery service from Google, tap NASA to help sidestep reams of bureaucratic red tape and get off the ground before, and it looks like the service could soon launch in earnest. The outfit’s laying the groundwork right now and says that its goal is having the commercial flights up and running in 2017, according to Reuters. The company is one of several working with the Federal Aviation Administration to develop a registry for drones and eventually dedicated air traffic control system. The former would ideally be in place by this December 20th, making sure operators are aware of rules on where, when and how to fly their aircraft.

Google’s David Vos told the audience at an air traffic control covention that his company would want low-altitude space (14,500 feet and below), coincidentally dubbed “Class G,” reserved for UAVs to fly over cities. Rather than continuously doing the hokey pokey to get past the FAA, this is a crucial step to getting more commercial drones in the air. Whether or not that’s a good thing is entirely up to you.

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Emerging technologies are shaking up how we grow food, distribute it, and even what we’re eating. We are seemingly on the cusp of a food revolution and undoubtedly, technologies including artificial intelligence will play a huge role in helping people grow healthier, more resilient food faster and with less energy than ever before.

Rob Nail, Singularity University’s CEO and Associate Founder, provides a few examples of how robotics, automation, and drones are transforming agriculture in this short video:

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http://aviationweek.com/defense/drone-angst-extends-beyond-backyard-spying

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zX4XXLb_Vuw

While the US military continues to develop new and awesome ways of blowing aerial drones to smithereens, not many of these systems can easily be adapted to use in the civilian realm. That’s why Battelle has developed the DroneDefender, a shoulder-mounted rifle that knocks UAVs offline with a barrage of radio waves.

“It can help us in numerous settings, from the White House lawn to bases and embassies overseas; from prisons and schools to historic sites,” Alex Morrow, technical director on the project, said in a statement. “It easily and reliably neutralizes the threat.” The weapon weighs roughly 10 pounds and can target drones up to 400 meters away. When the trigger is pulled, the gun emits a blast of electromagnetic energy tuned to the most common GPS and ISM frequencies, safely disabling the drone and preventing it from accepting any additional commands from its operator. This is especially helpful if the drone is equipped with an improvised explosive device.

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The future of Eco conservation?

Deforestation downs 10 billion trees around the globe annually. Replanting trees by hand is slow, expensive, and barely puts a dent in reversing the damage. But one startup wants to use drones that can reforest our increasingly tree-strapped Earth, on a big enough scale to replace slow and expensive hired humans.

The small company, called BioCarbon Engineering, says unmanned aerial vehicles are a great way of covering ravaged woodlands with seedlings that can repopulate the area’s tree population. Around the world, forests and jungles are still being leveled due to lumber overproduction, strip surface mining, urban expansion, and land use for agriculture.

Continue reading “This Startup Wants To Plant One Billion Trees a Year Using Drones” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=D0DbgNju2wE

Say hello to the drones of the future. They’re gorgeous, sophisticated, and they’ve got high-energy lasers.

The body of the drone will look familiar to those who are familiar with current drones as those lasers will be riding shotgun–quite literally–on General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’s Avenger. The company, also responsible for the Reaper, is embarking on a privately-funded study to figure out how to incorporate 150-kilowatt solid-state laser onto the drone, according to an interview with Defenseone. Depending on the success of the study, the company is hoping to have the laser drones up and running by 2017.

Continue reading “This Company Is Building Drones With Lasers On Top” »