Flying Drones That Can Walk And Jump Into The Air: An Idea With Legs?

When we look at how everyone’s favorite flying dinosaurs get around, we can see that although they use their wings a lot too, their legs are at least as important. Even waddling or hopping ab…

Trying To Shatter The World’s Fastest RC Car Record

Fresh off a world record for the fastest quadcopter, [Luke Bell] decided to try his luck with something more own to earth, namely trying to tackle the world record for the fastest RC car, with the …

Small Feathers, Big Effects: Reducing Stall Speeds With Strips Of Plastic

Birds have long been our inspiration for flight, and researchers at Princeton University have found a new trick in their arsenal: covert feathers. These small feathers on top of birds’ wings …

Experimental Drone Flies Like A Bird

Most RC planes follow a simple control scheme: elevators for pitch, rudder for yaw, and ailerons for roll. This one-to-one mapping keeps things straightforward, and fewer actuators means less weigh…

Modular Multi-Rotor Flies Up To Two Hours

Flight time remains the Achilles’ heel of electric multi-rotor drones, with even high-end commercial units struggling to stay airborne for an hour. Enter Modovolo, a startup that’s shat…

Transforming Drone Drives And Flies

Vehicles that change their shape and form to adapt to their operating environment have long captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts, and building one remains a perennial project dream for many…

Automated Weed Spraying Drone Needs No Human Intervention

Battling weeds can be expensive, labor intensive and use large amounts of chemicals. To help make this easier [NathanBuilds] has developed  V2 of his open-source drone weed spraying system, complet…

Amazon Receives FAA Approval For MK30 Delivery Drone

It’s been about a decade since Amazon began to fly its delivery drones, aiming to revolutionize the online shopping experience with rapid delivery of certain items. Most recently Amazon got p…

Custom Drone Software Searches, Rescues

When a new technology first arrives in people’s hands, it often takes a bit of time before the full capabilities of that technology are realized. In much the same way that many early Internet…

Solar Planes Are Hard

A regular comment we see on electric aircraft is to “just add solar panels to the wings.” [James] from Project Air has been working on just such a solar plane, and as he shows in the vi…

Tiny Drones Do Distributed Mapping

Sending teams of tiny drones to explore areas and structures is a staple in sci-fi and research, but the weight and size of sensors and the required processing power have long been a limiting facto…

Single Rotor Drone Spins For 360 Lidar Scanning

Multiple motors or servos are the norm for drones to achieve controllable flight, but a team from MARS LAB HKU was able to a 360° lidar scanning drone with full control on just a single motor and n…

The Challenges Of Charging Drones From Power Lines

Drones that charge right on the power lines they inspect is a promising concept, but comes with plenty of challenges. The Drone Infrastructure Inspection and Interaction (Diii) Group of the Univers…

Dog Poop Drone Cleans Up The Yard So You Don’t Have To

Sometimes you instantly know who’s behind a project from the subject matter alone. So when we saw this “aerial dog poop removal system” show up in the tips line, we knew it had to…

StratoSoar Glider Flies Itself From High Altitude

As the technology available to the average hacker and maker gets better and cheaper each year, projects which at one time might have only been within the reach of government agencies are inching cl…

Autonomous Boat Plots Lake Beds

Although the types of drones currently dominating headlines tend to be airborne, whether it’s hobbyist quadcopters, autonomous delivery vehicles, or military craft, autonomous vehicles can ta…

Making An Aluminium Foil Glider To Prototype Hydroforming

Hydroforming is a very effective way to turn a ductile metal like aluminium or stainless steel into a specific shape, either using a die or by creating a closed envelope in which the hydraulic flui…

Saildrones Searching The Sea For Clues To Hurricane Behavior

Hurricanes can cause widespread destruction, so early forecasting of their strength is important to protect people and their homes. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is …

Watch This RC Jet Thrust System Dance

An EDF (electric duct fan) is a motor that basically functions as a jet engine for RC aircraft. They’re built for speed, but to improve maneuverability (and because it’s super cool) [jo…

The End Of BLHeli_32: Long Live AM32?

An essential part of drones are the Electronic Speed Controller (ESC) which translate the commands from the flight computer into responses by the connected brushless motors (generally BLDCs). As th…