A company holds a patent for coaxial drone multirotors, locals push back on Amazon’s delivery plans, autonomous battery swapping, transforming battlefield medicine, drones in sports, saving elm trees, and investigating environmental polluters with drones.

UAV Video of the Week

Video: Why coaxial configuration of drones is a brilliant invention

Nordic Unmanned has a patent for coaxial configuration on a drone. (Where two motors operate on the same axis, rotating in opposite directions.) The company will license the concept as a product. For more, see Nordic Unmanned – Coaxial Configuration Patent.

UAV NewsAmazon drones are coming to town. Some locals want to shoot them.

Amazon recently announced they would begin delivering packages by drone in the United States. Six months ago the company notified local authorities in unincorporated Lockeford, California. The drone facility is under construction, but residents are just hearing about it now and are not all supportive.

Airrow is automating battery and payload swapping for drones

Airrow is an LA-based startup developing an autonomous device that swaps drone batteries and payloads. They say, “The biggest problem with drones today is the manual labor behind each drone’s ground operation.” Airrow believes that up to 80% of the daily operational costs for drones can be eliminated by “removing human labor from the mundane job of servicing a drone’s routine operation.” They call their solution Dronehub.

How Drones Will Transform Battlefield Medicine – and Save Lives

In combat operations, one significant way to save lives is to provide blood products to forward-deployed medics and corpsmen quickly. Blood loss (or “bleeding out”) is reported to be the leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield. Drones could offer a way to deliver blood products quickly.

Drones in sports: Evolution of sports through digital eyes

Indian sports company KreedOn looks at how drones impact sports:

• Training and game analytics
• Get food delivered to your seat
• Pre-game and halftime entertainment
• Drones in sport – Security and sanitation
• Broadcasting
• Refereeing
• Aerial mapping
• Drones in sports- Drone racing and drone soccer

Aerospace company working to protect tree canopy using drone technology

Dutch elm disease has devastated elm trees in a number of countries. Volatus Aerospace wants to use drones to identify the disease earlier than is usually the case. The drones can fly through an area and use a machine-learning algorithm to identify suspect trees. The traditional ground-based assessment is slow and costly.

Enviros train drone pilots to find and pursue pollution

The non-profit Waterkeeper Alliance is a global network of clean water groups. They are training activists to use drones for storytelling and evidence collection while investigating suspected violations of the Clean Air Act.