"Maker Voice" technology giants seize the "air supremacy"

Maker Voice is a column for friends who are interested in new hardware, the initial form is an article every day, combing the summary of the day down the new hardware industry's essence, may be an interesting product, it may be a thought-provoking point of view, the goal is to let friends in the shortest time here to look at the real worth of attention to the content. so,enjoy!

In recent years, the UAV has attracted a lot of attention and discussion. Technology giants favor drones, Amazon launches Prime Air's drone logistics program, and Google buys Titan Aerospace,facebook, an unmanned aircraft company, to buy British drone company Ascenta for $20 million. With the development of technology, the consumer-grade civilian UAV (Multi-Axis aircraft) is constantly entering people's field of vision. Today we will take stock of those commercial drones and related industries.

1, Flying Express: Amazon released 8-wing UAV Prime Air, has been iterative to the nineth generation

At the end of 2013, Amazon announced a 8-wing drone called Prime Air, which could send a five-pound courier to your home in half an hour. Amazon is still committed to dominating the shopping world, giving users endless choices, the lowest prices, and the immediate delivery that will be realized in the future.

Now, Amazon's Prime Air has been iterated into the nineth generation, with a load of 5 pounds of cargo, flying at speeds exceeding 50 mph. A larger range of outdoor flight tests have been applied to the FAA.

Last year there was a video showing Shun Fung also in the inside of the drone delivery, but there is no official confirmation. Foreign UPS is also testing the drone delivery service, which is mainly used to transport goods from airports or cities to remote sorting centers.

2, Google and Facebook scramble for the drone Solara

Solar is an unmanned aircraft developed by Titan Aerospace, a drone manufacturer. Founded in 2012, the main research and development of new unmanned aerial vehicles, trying to replace the high cost of near-earth satellite use. Titan Aerospace has successfully developed and started testing drone Solara 50 and 60, which can be fired at night only by battery power, and rely on solar energy to replenish kinetic energy during the day, which can last for five years without landing.

In March 2014, Facebook proposed a 60 million dollar takeover of Titan Aerospace to counter Google Whye's hot-air balloon ambitions. But Google, after revealing the news, said it was willing to pay a higher price, regardless of how much Facebook offered, and eventually managed to recruit it.

3, Facebook acquired Ascenta Solar unmanned aircraft

Despite being loved by Google's horizontal knife, it failed to acquire Titan Aerospace and drone Solara, but Facebook took a place in the drone sector in March, when it successfully acquired another British drone company, Ascenta, with 20 million dollars.

Ascenta solar drones can fly at 20km high altitude for a period of 1 months. For Google and Facebook, unlike Amazon, they promote drones primarily to provide Web services. Who can give priority to providing online services to remote residents, who will take the initiative to win the next 1 billion users.

4. Airborne Data acquisition Platform Skycatch UAV

Skycatch's newest UAV is based on Pixhawk flight control UAV, can be mounted according to mission requirements of the equipment, can also be directly controlled by remote control. This unmanned aerial vehicle speeds up to 80km/h, the flight altitude can reach 120 meters. Under the wind conditions can be self-stable or fixed-point, in the 40km/h wind speed, fixed-point hover error within 30cm, hovering precision more than many high-end commercial flight control.

The UAV will automatically return to the takeoff point after completing a flight cycle. After landing, the landing point of the intelligent robotic arm can automatically remove the drone battery, from a similar merry-go-round charging device to remove a new battery to the drone, and each battery also has a 15GB storage device, can be placed in the charger, while the The image data is synchronized to the cloud storage center via WiFi.

Skycatch's UAV Zhu Construction, mining, solar, and agricultural clients made data collection, which received 13.2 million of billions of dollars in funding this May, with the management of Avalon Venture.

5, Airware to the drone to install the brain

Specifically, Airware is not a commercial UAV, but a commercial UAV development of internal components and System application development platform, can be based on unmanned aircraft chip development, such as path optimization navigation applications. Currently, drones built into Airware technology are being used in Kenya to monitor illegal hunting of white rhinos, where they are used to search for missing skiers, monitor damaged power and gas pipelines, and even include vaccine delivery and air quality monitoring.

Last year, Airware announced that it had won 10.7 million of billions of dollars through a series of financing rounds, including the Anderson Horowitz Fund (Andreessen Horowitz) and Google's VC ventures, the company's investment company.

6, DARPA also play drones: testing the drone into a wireless hotspot

Starting in 2012, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Studies, is experimenting with the drone into a wireless hotspot to form a high-speed wireless network. The experiment has made preliminary progress in April this year.

The latest development is that DARPA has developed a controllable antenna and an efficient radio amplifier, which can already be installed on the drone, so that through the efficient transmission of hot spots, the UAV can be connected to remote areas of military equipment, enabling these military equipment to access information , surveillance and reconnaissance data. It is not yet certain when the technology will be commercially available.