Tag: UAV

Thanks to a new fleet of unmanned aircraft, British fugitives must now look above their heads instead of just over their shoulders. According to Engadget, the U.K. Home Office is rolling out a fleet of unmanned security drones, and this new task force has nabbed its first criminal. Merseyside police, who've been learning the ropes of piloting drones for about six months now, recently used ...

QinetiQ just (unofficially) smashed the record for an unmanned flight by a solar airplane, sending its Zephyr craft into the air for a staggering 83 hours and 37 minutes, more than double the official record by "Global Hawk" in 2001, and a good margin more than its last flight. The plane was guided by autopilot and satellites to a height of 60,000 feet, and powers off the sun during the day, ...

In the U.S. we have DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which hosts regular challenges for things like cars that can race around cities sans drivers. The closest U.K. equivalent is the Ministry of Defense Grand Challenge, which tasks teams of engineers to come up with solutions to provide enhanced intelligence to troops on the ground. Competitors for that challenge are set to ...

The Hyfish, a hydrogen fuel-cell powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), made its maiden flight over Switzerland recently. The small jet hit a top speed of 200 kph (roughly 124 mph) and even managed some acrobatic maneuvers. Right now the craft is merely a prototype, but we're sure to see a military application in the near future, especially with the engineers claiming that 15-30 hour flights ...

While previous personal hovercraft attempts have looked like they'd inflict anything from broken limbs to certain death upon the operator, British inventor Geoff Hatton's new design almost certainly prevents that, if only because his vehicle actually too small to ride. However, if the mini-hovercraft's military aspirations come to fruition, it might be responsible for bringing a little pain to ...