Delivery drones

Engineers at MIT have devised a way to help drones find their way through unlit indoor spaces autonomously, without costly cameras. That'll come in handy for mapping and monitoring warehouses and tunnels, as well as search and rescue operations.

Back in July, the Japanese government outlined an intriguing idea to connect major cities with what sounded like a giant "conveyor belt" for cargo. Now we have a clearer picture of what that “Auto Flow Road” will look like.

Though not exactly commonplace quite yet, rolling robots have been delivering goods to local customers for a while now. At the same time, packages have been flying overhead by drone. Now Serve Robotics and Wing Aviation are ready to merge the two.

Following successful trials last year at a UK wind farm, Denmark's Ørsted has now put heavy lift drones to work at a 94-turbine offshore wind farm in the North Sea – completing resupply missions up to 15 times faster while also reducing costs.

The Scottish company behind a novel heavy-lift utility UAV that uses an internal combustion engine and hydraulic motors has now frozen design plans and is preparing for production following successful flight tests in Denmark.

Although DJI is probably the best-known manufacturer of consumer drones, it hasn't ventured into the world of delivery drones … until last week, that is. The company's FlyCart 30 (FC30) is now set to join the growing ranks of package-toting copters.

Fresh video shows that one of the most fascinating eVTOL aircraft designs we've seen is now flying at larger scale. The Transwing platform uses a unique dihedral folding wing system to move between hover and cruise modes, unlocking huge advantages.

Understanding whales has historically been a time-consuming and difficult task for scientists, not least because these magnificent mammals spend about 95% of their days underwater. Now, drone technology is offering a new frontier of vital research.

If a drone is large and powerful enough to carry packages long distances, then that drone is likely too big and noisy to be landing in amongst trees, houses and bystanders. The BMT Sparrow system could help, by autonomously steering lowered loads.

When we last heard about Zipline, the California company was using parachutes to drop packages from its delivery drones to the ground. The firm's just-announced Platform 2 (P2) system, however, lowers loads inside of self-steering "droids."

Food vendors won't have to wait around for Wing's delivery drones to come pick up an order. The company has released video of new "AutoLoader" stations that'll hang onto boxes waiting for a skyhook-style pickup from the next available drone.

While short-range radio remote control may be fine for consumer drones, long-distance delivery drones often use cellular networks to communicate with their operators. A new mobile network system could make the latter method much more reliable.