Unmanned

The team at Volocopter has sent its 18-rotor aircraft into the skies over Stuttgart as part of its first urban demonstration flight in a European city center.

BAE Systems will demonstrate an unmanned surface vessel fully integrating with the combat systems of a Royal Navy warship for the first time.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has announced that it plans to send the first American unmanned rover to the Moon in July 2021. The miniature four-wheeled robot will ride aboard the Peregrine lander along with 14 other scientific payloads and will carry a miniature art gallery on its journey.

At a recent live-fire exercise in Tapa, Estonia, the latest version of Milrem Robotics and ST Engineering's ground combat robot showed off its ability to operate under Beyond Line Of Sight (BLVOS) control while equipped with the ADDER DM Remote Weapon Station.

Raytheon is developing what is billed as a universal remote for the US Navy that will allow a single unit to control a wide range of unmanned vehicles, saving space onboard ships as well as making pilot training easier.

After trying and failing last year, Offshore Sensing has now succeeded in sailing an unmanned vessel across the Atlantic. The Sailbuoy Met was deployed from Newfoundland on June 7, 2018 and reached the coast of Ireland on August 26, a distance of 3,000 km.

Conducting scientific research in the ocean's surf zone can be challenging, as conventional watercraft get tossed all over the place. Well, what about using a remote-control tracked vehicle that crawls along the bottom? That's just what the Surf Rover is planned to be.

This chunky multirotor can carry up to a 400-lb payload, and fly for up to eight hours. The SKYF uses the power and endurance of gasoline engines for lift, and the instant torque of electric motors for control and stabilization, resulting in a heavy-lift, affordable multirotor using today's tech.

Yamaha announced today that it will show a multi-rotor YMR-01 drone at tomorrow's Next Generation Agriculture Expo in Tokyo. The YMR-01 is one of many new agricultural drones to be launched at the expo, but it is a landmark in that it is the first multicopter to be shown by Yamaha.​

For several years​, VTOL Aerospace has been developing a closed wing tiltrotor aircraft that blends the VTOL capabilities of a helicopter with the range and efficiency of fixed-wing aircraft. The company has now revealed its latest line, a smaller unmanned version called a Converticopter.

RE2 Robotics, a Carnegie Mellon spin-off located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been tapped by the US Air Force to develop a drop-in robotic system that can fly an unmodified aircraft in much the same way as a human pilot.

A team of engineers at MIT has developed a cheaper UAV design that has the ability to stay aloft for up to five days at low-altitudes on a single tank of gasoline, potentially offering communications support in areas struck by natural disasters.