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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.

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.

Skyward, a Verizon company, has been awarded a temporary waiver from the FAA that allows its pilots to fly the Percepto Sparrow drone from their homes to inspect critical communications infrastructure near the Big Hollow wildfire in Washington.

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. 

Shell announced recently that in July it inked a deal with Baker Hughes' drone venture company, Avitas, to expand drone-monitoring services at its unconventional assets in the Permian Basin.

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.

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.

Nathan Zecks Mazvazva, a 25-year-old farmer in Zimbabwe, owns nearly 500 acres, growing green beans to green peppers. Simply put, technology—more specifically, drones—is making his livelihood more cost efficient.

Park officials grapple with unmanned aircraft in natural areas, admit recreational drone operators who violate rules are difficult to catch.

Russian defense firm Rostec is partnering with a small Latvian startup to make tiltrotor drones for dangerous Arctic operations.

One solution for reducing time and costs associated with visually inspecting individual wind turbine sites prior to development is to use an unmanned aerial vehicle when conducting the in-person field review.

A Canadian startup plans to use its drone technology to plant 40,000 trees on land north of Toronto this month. By the end of the year, as it expands to other regions, it will plant hundreds of thousands of trees. By 2028, the startup aims to have planted a full 1 billion trees.

As part of its Wildfire Mitigation Plan, Southern California Edison will use drones over parts of the High Desert to inspect power equipment.

Rawanda has launched a major fight against malaria that will use drones to totally whip out mosquito lava before they get a chance to nest into adult insects.

Fishermen have always relied on the understanding of the elements to guide them: the water current, its temperature, the direction of the wind and its humidity are important information used to locate fish. Now, drones are bringing some fishfinding technology back above the water.

Unmanned aerial vehicles have found use in agriculture for decades, with unmanned helicopters spraying pesticides on rice fields in Japan back in the 1980s. Now, to have drones reach their full potential in farming, research is increasingly pushing toward beyond visual line of sight operations.

The US Department of Interior has ordered the temporary grounding of non-emergency unmanned aircraft systems fleet operations.

Five companies from around the world have now settled into Syracuse's Tech Garden for the next GENIUS NY competition.

DroneUp LLC and the State of Alaska have signed a Participating Addendum for the NASPO ValuePoint contract for unmanned aerial vehicle services.

High-tech tools meet holiday tradition in North Carolina this winter, thanks to a new research partnership that will explore how drone technology can help Christmas tree growers more efficiently measure and manage their unique crop.

The privately held startup DroneSeed obtained an additional amendment to its already unprecedented FAA Part 333 exemption that enables them to operate their seed-planting drones Beyond Visual Line of Sight in forested and post-fire areas.

Having eyes on the ground, quickly, is essential to any effective disaster management plan. Having them in the air, however, looks set the be the next big thing in the offshore oil and gas industry.

There are many terrific benefits of drones across multiple sectors.  Every week, we read about the new benefits of using UAVs for inspections.

Airspace under 400 feet should be redesigned so federal, state and local governments can take full advantage of drones, the director of Interior's Office of Aviation Services said recently.

In this question & answer articke frpm Prairie Business, SkySkopes CEO Matt Dunlevy talks about his company's role today as a drone service provider.

Aerial ignition with helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft has long been a key component of fighting fire with fire, but the vast majority of missions still feature a human pilot in the sky.
Now, whether by sky drops of flammable ping pong balls or the full-on force of a flamethrower, a growing number of US government agencies, including the Department of the Interior and the forest service, are turning to unmanned aircraft to battle fires by setting them first.

Drones are revolutionizing environmental research; however, drones could do much more. Scientists need to work with regulators and software developers to improve laws and data products.

The Oneida Indian Nation recently announced that it has formed a partnership with the Syracuse-based nonprofit NUAIR (Northeast Unmanned aircraft systems Airspace Integration Research) to use drones to monitor, observe, manage and protect its lands and other environmental resources.

Measuring the height of Brazil's towering rainforests can be a tall order. But an international team of researchers say they are working together to turn unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, into efficient, low-cost data collectors that can monitor the progress of forest restoration.

A May 2019 survey by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) underscores the rapid deployment of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) by state departments of transportation (DOTs), as well as the growing demand for a workforce to operate them.

Defense researchers are examining ways that emergency responders could use next-generation technologies – particularly those that have been developed for use on the battlefield – to help prevent the deadly spread of wildfires and save lives at home. To this end, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has kickstarted the first-of-its-kind "hackathon" project in collaboration with the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, known as the "Swarm and Search AI Challenge: 2019 Fire Hack."

There's plenty to be excited about after AeroVironment reported results for its fiscal 2019 third quarter. AeroVironment, a leading developer of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones, reported 38% revenue growth and a gross margin of 40%, both a year-over-year improvement.

The city of Grand Forks began working this past weekend with several entities from the local sector for unmanned aerial systems to monitor flooding in areas that will either experience high water levels or in areas the city is less familiar with.

The Department of the Interior saved $14.8 million in 2018 as it expanded its fleet of unmanned aircraft systems to support operations across the U.S. The department released its UAS Program 2018 Use Report April 1 that details the agency's spending and aircraft use during the year.

Scientists from the Northern Gulf Institute at Mississippi State University deployed a small unmanned plane that took high-resolution images of rising waters of the Yalobusha River around Greenwood, Mississippi, during a major rainstorm in late February, and beamed them back in real time to NOAA weather forecasters.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, also called UAVs or drones, have recently become so affordable and easy to fly that they are winding up in the hands of more environmentalists. Pipeline opponents and watchdog groups are perfect examples.

President Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law Tuesday that pushes federal agencies to explore increased use of drones in managing and fighting wildfires.

The House passed legislation February 26 promoting the use of drones and other advanced technology to improve government response to wildfires.

DroneSeed—a drone company that uses drone swarms to accelerate reforestation by planting and protecting trees—is in the news again, this time with plans to help restore rangelands affected by invasive species in Oregon.

DroneSeed has signed a contract with The Nature Conservancy to support the replanting of native species with advanced technologies in sagebrush habitat, the company announced on 20 February. The contract will see the use of UAS swarms to restore the Oregon rangelands affected by invasive species and re-seed native plants and endangered species, such as the sage-grouse.

Surveyors are harnessing the power of drone technology by focusing on at-risk riparian areas of northern New Jersey. In fact, images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles have become part of the documentation for a FEMA program that saves Pompton Lakes residents hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on flood insurance premiums.

With help from mentors from Sikorsky, three University of Connecticut (UConn) engineering seniors are working to build and program an autonomous firefighting UAS to battle fires without a pilot's guidance. Once the UAS is complete, it will be equipped with a thermal imaging camera to identify a fire, object avoidance technology to steer clear of any obstacles, and a softball-sized fire-extinguishing ball that will be dropped over the flames.

In the exclusive interview, Commercial UAV News reporter Jeremiah Karpowicz caught up with Christopher Todd, executive director of the Airborne International Response Team, to find out how things have changed for Airborne Response, what kind of real-world differences he's seen drone technology make, what type of insights will be explored at both the LA and Miami UAs disaster conferences, plus much more.

The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality isn't the only state agency that has adopted drone technology, but their use isn't yet widespread and state officials don't yet have standardized procedures or purchasing rules. An Oklahoman analysis shows at least nine agencies own at least one unmanned aerial vehicle.

Hours before parts of the federal government were to shutdown, the president signed an executive order directing the federal government to boost wildfire prevention by reducing the amount of fuel — that is brush, dead trees and timber —on public lands. The White House also told the agencies involved to work with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to "maximize appropriate use of unmanned aerial systems" to help meet their goals.

Can the unmanned aircraft systems commonly known as drones help bees become more efficient at pollination to increase agricultural production?
A collaboration between an Australian technology startup company and the UAS program at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks will attempt to answer this question.

The Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research (NUAIR) Alliance recently partnered with WindShape and TruWeather Solutions to test the impact of wind on the airworthiness and performance of different types of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

A University of Missouri researcher is teaming up with scholars in Kansas and Georgia to develop drone technology to monitor and potentially predict the spread of wildfires.

Unmanned aircraft systems offer the potential to provide timely and accurate reference data in forests and other complex environments for research and management applications, according to researchers at the University of New Hampshire.