Shell Oil Co. and drone manufacturer DJI announced a partnership on Aug. 25 to develop new methods for industrial inspections at Shell’s Deer Park Manufacturing Complex in Texas.
The FAA has issued separate notices seeking information from industry on providing counter-unmanned aircraft systems technology for deployment at civilian airports and for testing capacity to determine the risk associated with a large jet engine ingesting a small drone.
Jaunt Air Mobility plans to introduce an all-electric eVTOL aircraft for advanced air mobility in the next few years. Simon Briceno, who heads advanced air mobility for Jaunt, talks about the program’s development and intended maintenance plans.
FAA receives more than 100 reports of drone sightings by pilots, citizens and police each month—it lists more than 400 in its latest report, for the April-June period.
The FAA says it will continue the work of a soon-to-end pilot effort with local and state governments and industry to introduce drones more regularly into the airspace system.
Planned flight trials at FAA-designated UAS test sites in New York and Virginia will evaluate remote-identification technologies to track drones from the ground in increasingly complex traffic environments.
NASA has awarded New York State’s FAA-designated unmanned aircraft systems test site an $897,000 task order to research automation technology for vertiport operations.
Japanese electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing start-up SkyDrive is looking at launching an air taxi service in 2023 in either Osaka or Tokyo, with initial flights over the sea, CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said in an interview with the Japan Times.
Israeli company Percepto says its Sparrow small unmanned aircraft system for industrial applications now features an integral parachute that meets FAA requirements.
Israeli start-up Gadfin has been selected by multinational energy company Enel Group to demonstrate electrical infrastructure inspection using a fuel-cell-powered long-range drone.
Wireless charging system developer WiBotic on Aug. 6 announced Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorization of its line of transmitters and receivers for charging drones, mobile robots and industrial automation devices.