Drones

Glass-clad skyscrapers need to be inspected on a regular basis, in order to ensure that the glass panes are securely attached and undamaged. Doing so might soon become much quicker and safer, with a little help from a special drone.

Although there are many possible uses for multicopter drones, one thing that's holding the tech back is battery life – the aircraft can't fly for more than half an hour. According to TerraView, however, its new RangePro X8 runs for over 70 minutes.

While quadcopters may provide photographers with a great way of getting aerial shots, sometimes a ground-based approach to the subject is what's required. That's why Vanora Robots has developed a four-wheeled camera platform known simply as Steve.

Announced today, the Volodrone is cut from the same cloth as Volocopter's electric passenger aircraft that sports 18 rotors and is electric-powered, but sports an attachment system underneath to carry heavy loads of all shapes and sizes.

DJI has announced the latest member of its Mavic family of folding drones. The Mavic Mini folds up to palm-sized proportions, can capture 2.7K video when in flight and is reported to have one of the longest flight times for a drone this size.

Hazardous places such as burning buildings can be dangerous to explore, which is why scientists are increasingly looking at using swarms of tiny drones to do the job. A bioinspired navigation system could help make such life-saving swarms a reality.

Among the proposed uses for drones, one of the most compelling is the search for survivors at disaster sites. That process could soon be more efficient, thanks to a system that allows drone cameras to differentiate between living and dead bodies.

Logistics giant UPS has high hopes for its delivery drones and has today announced a number of new business partners in pursuit of this vision, with massive pharmacy chain CVS among them.

Skydio released an impressive self-flying camera drone in early October that may well take autonomous flight to a whole new level, and in a new purpose-built base station it could soon have the self-charging capabilities to go with it.

If microbes such as toxic cyanobacteria are present in water bodies, then the sooner that health authorities know, the better. The prototype Pelican drone is designed with that in mind, as it can autonomously perform on-location water analyses.

Although camera drones can already automatically circle or follow a subject, they don't know what sort of shots actually "look good" artistically. That could be about to change, as a new system turns drones into self-directed aerial cinematographers.

Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey hopes his company's Interceptor drone can help with national security by knocking other drones out of the air.