A UAS for Venus from Black Swift Technologies, DJI building a new headquarters complex, MIT develops the Navion chip, DroneDeploy spells out commercial drone predictions for 2018 and beyond, and LiquidPiston is developing a rotary drone engine.

UAV NewsBlack Swift Technologies Awarded NASA Contract to Develop UAS for Atmospheric Observations of Venus

Black Swift Technologies announced it has been awarded a NASA contract to perform upper atmospheric observations of the planet Venus. They will develop an unmanned aircraft system based on the concept of dynamic soaring. Jack Elston, CEO of Black Swift Technologies said, “While there have been a variety of systems proposed for upper atmospheric observations of Venus, the planet’s high wind speeds pose a significant design challenge. Our solution will be designed to not only survive in the harsh wind environment, but also simultaneously perform targeted sampling of the atmosphere while continuously extracting energy, even on the dark side of the planet.”

DJI’s Shiny New HQ Has a Sky Bridge for Showing Off Drones

DJI is constructing new company headquarters in China. The 1.7 million square foot complex includes twin towers connected with a sky bridge. This sky bridge includes a giant indoor space for demonstrating and testing drones.

Video: Foster + Partners’ Shenzhen ‘drone’ towers

Chip upgrade helps miniature drones navigate

A team at MIT has developed a custom chip called Navion that is smaller, has lower power consumption, and increased processing speed. Applications for Navion include tiny “nanodrones.” The chip can process real-time camera images up to 171 frames per second as well as inertial measurements. Researchers say the chip can help vehicles navigate, “particularly in remote or inaccessible places where global positioning satellite data is unavailable.”

2018 Commercial Drone Industry Predictions: DroneDeploy weighs in on the future of drones in 2018 and beyond [PDF]

Drone data company DroneDeploy has eight predictions for the commercial drone industry in 2018. These are continued consumerization of drone hardware, more outside players entering the Industry, in-house drone programs replacing service providers, deployments of large-scale fleets, a new era of automation, acquisition of large data sets, use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and real-time data collection and analysis.

US military wants quieter drones

LiquidPiston Inc. is developing the X4 engine that offers the possibility of quieter drones, greater flight time, and reduced thermal signature. With some similarity to the Wankel engine, the X4 has an oval rotor inside a triangular chamber. DARPA is interested in the X4 enough to invest $2.5 million in LiquidPiston to continue research and development of the engine.

Video: LiquidPiston X Engine

LiquidPiston X Engine from LiquidPiston on Vimeo.