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The technology is already out in force in some cities, but the true debate on privacy and policies is lagging behind.

The Matrice DJI M30T is the latest addition to the fleet but is already pulling its weight for clients who want to get to grips with sky-high energy costs.

A festival celebrating the earliest form of aviation was complemented by the very latest in aviation technology, when drone show specialist Verge Aero flew a series of spectacular light shows for the 50th anniversary Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta (AIBF) in New Mexico.

Drones are widely recognized as an indispensible tool in firefighting.  Now, researchers from George Mason University are working on a drone and wearable sensor solution that can locate each firefighter working in a burning building – and notify their team if they're in trouble.

Red Cat Holdings Subsidiary Teal Drones Awarded $1M+ Contract from U.S. Border Patrol

Data contribution and app creation platform Navigate has opened its first Data Vault, providing a global audience of drone users with the ability to upload their drone data and gain rewards in the form of Navigate's native utility token, NVG8.

Picterra, the leading provider of geospatial machine learning software, today announced powerful new data curation and exploration technology that allows users to get a better understanding of their datasets and improve model accuracy. This industry-first innovation enables organizations and AI teams to get automated insights into their dataset and build more robust models with lower annotation costs.

A group of 14 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University students took a service-learning trip to New Mexico and Arizona this summer to work with archeologists in mapping ancient cities.

New Everest short film reveals unprecedented aerial images

Working with safety innovator Iris Automation, Florida-based Overhead Intelligence has commenced its first major EVLOS (extended visual line of sight) plus BVLOS flight (with 50/50 split) operation using Casia I for the entire province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The mission is for UAV magnetometer surveys in partnership with GroundTruth Exploration.

Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) is a buzz term in the UA industry, one many pilots may not understand, even though they may be "mapping" with an uncrewed aircraft (drone).   When it comes to RTK and drone mapping, how necessary is the technology to a drone services provider?  Will it earn a services provider more money?
The following is a guest post by drone industry veteran Douglas Spotted Eagle, Production and Education Director at Sundance Media Group.  DRONELIFE neither accepts nor makes payment for guest posts.

Zena Drone has helped revolutionize the burgeoning hemp industry.  In this guest post, Leah Jacobe outlines five ways that intelligent drones in the agriculture sector are helping growers to meet the demands of global food production.

Skydio has announced its upcoming 3D Tower Capture, the newest autonomous capture mode for its Skydio 3D Scan software. 3D Tower Capture is optimized for vertical structures, starting with telecommunications towers.

Drone Pilot and Photographer Douglas Thron travels the world following natural disasters, using drones for animal rescue.

Traditionally, the documentation of As-Built construction surveys relied on conventional methods such as total stations and digital photogrammetry. However, the team at Spatial Data Consultants (SDC), an expert geospatial consulting firm in High Point, North Carolina, is using drone LiDAR technology to more efficiently create accurate and precise As-Built Surveys.

Teledyne FLIR Unveils Radiometric Vue TZ20-R Thermal Zoom Drone Payload. The high-resolution radiometric gimbaled thermal drone payload for the DJI V2 Matrice 200 Series and Matrice 300 offers pixel-by-pixel temperature measurement with up to 20 times digital zoom.

Using drones for residential solar: DroneDeploy software allows Sunrun to conduct roof inspection without risk to workers

BYU's main campus is 560 acres in size and includes roughly 100 large academic buildings. There are some 6,000 trees (900 species), miles of sidewalks and, according to most students, far too many stairs.
Grad student Bryce Berrett and his faculty mentors have virtually mapped every last inch of it. Using more than 80,000 drone-captured and ground images, and applying GPS systems for accuracy, the civil engineering student has stitched together a comprehensive 3D model of the entire BYU campus.

Sony Electronics Inc. today announced the availability timing of the company's first-ever professional drone, "Airpeak S1." The introductory model in the new Airpeak line, the S1 is the world's smallest drone that can be equipped with a full-size mirrorless interchangeable-lens Alpha camera, opening up a new world of creative possibilities for cinematographers and other visual storytelling professionalsi. Pre-sale opens today, December 1, 2021, with an expected customer ship date of December 24, 2021.

NTT DOCOMO, INC, Japan's leading mobile operator with more than 83 million subscribers, has announced its development of a blade-free, blimp-type drone.

XAG, the trailblazers of agriculture robotics and AI, has geared up to launch its V40 and P40 Agricultural Drone globally, bringing digital agriculture into more rural areas with aging populations and weak infrastructure. The XAG V40 and P40 are fully autonomous drones that can conduct mapping, spraying, and broadcast on farm. They are designed in supporting farmers' transition to climate-smart practices, driving greater growth with lower carbon footprints and less agrochemical.

The use of drones for fighting wildfires is a "hot" topic, with more than 6 million acres of forest burned this year. When they are used by emergency responders they have proven to help suppress and contain massive blazes, and save lives on the ground and in the air.

For an animal that's culturally ubiquitous, koalas are remarkably hard to spot in the wild.
As a result, it's difficult for scientists and conservationists to know just how many koalas are out there.
In New South Wales the population could be around 36,000, but last year's NSW parliamentary inquiry heard those figures are "outdated and unreliable" and the real number could be half that.
The same inquiry recommended exploring the use of drones to gain a more accurate head-count.
Happily, researchers from the University of Newcastle were already testing drones in collaboration with the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.

Betla National Park under the Palamau Tiger Reserve is using drones with an aim to keep poachers and hunters away from the park. The drone is being flown mostly before the sunset. This operation is overseen by N Kumar, a 2018 batch Indian Forests Service officer, who is on his probation here.

Drones are widely used to take amazing aerial photos, or to inspect infrastructure and crops. But in the future it is hoped they can increasingly be deployed to help firefighters or search and rescue operations in emergency situations.

City tax collectors are looking to the sky for more revenue — proposing the use of flying drones to do property assessments with an eye on setting up their own pilot certification program.

A Chattanooga-based company is using satellite technology to help farmers in the Sequatchie Valley.

Under the FAA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program earlier this week, Iris Automation conducted a live drone flight demonstration for the City of Reno Fire Department of its Casia onboard Detect-and-Avoid collision avoidance system, which enables safe beyond visual line of sight drone operations.

This column aims to collect the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in but not limited to artificial intelligence — and explain why they matter, including a startup that's using UAV drones for mapping forests.

The Federal Aviation Administration approved a waiver Oct. 2 that allows the North Carolina Department of Transportation to operate UAS beyond visual line of sight while conducting bridge inspections.

A missing 93-year-old Missouri woman was found safe thanks to a drone and thermal cameras.

A drone camera caught a close encounter between a surfer and a white shark off the coast of New South Wales, Australia,recently. The drone is operated by Surf Life Saving NSW,a program that is part of the $8 million NSW Government Shark Management Strategy. The goal is to prevent shark attacks by getting people out of the water when large sharks are present.

A multi-agency task force of public safety drone teams has been supporting local agencies and residents impacted by California wildfires with high-resolution aerial imagery of damaged areas.

Skydio recently announced that it will work with EagleView to deploy automated residential roof inspections using Skydio drones.

Amazon is launching a new Ring security camera that's fixed on top of a flying drone.

Small unmanned aircraft systems are helping agents track more undocumented immigrants, a division chief with the U.S. Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector said recently.

Archaeologists using new drone-sensing technology have found evidence of an enormous, horseshoe-shaped trench hidden beneath a Kansas ranch. The rounded earthwork, which may be part of the largest pre-Hispanic settlement north of Mexico, appears to be what's known as a council circle.

Somewhere around the world firefighters are gearing up to tackle a wildfire. To manage the rapid, unpredictable and destructive spread, firefighters are opting for sophisticated resources and innovative technology -- Drones

In an effort to safely and humanely rescue marine mammals, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has partnered with marine biologists and a Verizon drone-management platform to monitor animals in distress using unmanned aircraft systems. 

Bridger Aerospace has been operating an unmanned aerial system (UAS) on wildfires this year that first went into production in 2019 built by L3 Latitude Engineering.

AgEagle Aerial Systems Inc., a provider of UAVs and advanced aerial imagery, data collection and analytics solutions, will locate and expand its manufacturing operations in Wichita, Kansas.

Aerial ignition to fight wildfires used to be done by helicopters. Now, as part of an increasingly progressive firefighting strategy honed by the Bureau of Land Management and adopted by the Forest Service and National Interagency Fire Center, drones are handling airborne firebombing and more.

 A pair of environmental consulting firms located in North Carolina and Kentucky conducted bat surveys using Unmanned Aerial Systems.

When you hear about people looking at "the big picture" before making a decision, it might mean looking at 21,200 pictures in Dyer, Indiana. That's how many images are compiled using unmanned aerial vehicle technology to give town officials a single clear picture of the lay of the land.

In hopes of being on the cutting edge of technology, the city of Monroe, Wash., is now operating an Unmanned Aerial System program. The drones are available for a wide variety of uses in the city.

As industry and society in general come back on line after months of interruption due to the threat of COVID- 19, Garrett Scott, UAS coordinator for Duke Energy, said he believes "a lot of the things we're seeing right now, whether because of social distancing or the financial [aspect], are going to be around for quite a while after we move out of this mandated period."

If you are lost in a rural area or simply attempting to hide from police, the Moose Jaw Police Service now has new technology to find you either way.

For the first time in department history, Santa Maria Police used a drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle, to seek out a suspect hiding in the riverbed over the weekend. 

As the annual hurricane season hits Florida, Israeli-made autonomous drones are helping the state's major power utility keep customers connected.

For the first time, UAS were used to remotely inspect the runway at Cranfield Airport, which is located just outside the village of Cranfield, in Bedfordshire, England.