Bluefin-21 is in the water after being craned over the side of Australian Defense Vessel Ocean Shield to begin using its side-scan sonar in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on April 14.Image: Leut Kelli Lunt/Getty Images If wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is ever discovered, an underwater drone could very well be the first thing to spot it. The Bluefin-21 was contracted by the U.S. Navy to dive into the southern Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia and scan the ocean floor for pieces of the plane that went missing on March 8 with 239 people onboard. The drone was forced to resurface on April 16 due to a technical issue, according to a press release provided to Mashable by the Joint Agency Coordination Center, a search organization the Australian government created to help find the missing Malaysia airliner. Officials downloaded the drone’s memory once it was above water but, so far, Bluefin-21 has turned up nothing significant. Built by Bluefin Robotics but owned and operated by Phoenix International, this autonomous underwater vehicle takes instructions from a ship’s radio before diving up to around 2.8 miles underwater. The remains of flight MH370 might be much farther down, but at that depth Bluefin-21 can blast the ocean floor with a sonar beam. Data picked up from the sonar will be delivered once the drone resurfaces. Jim Gibson, General Manager of Phoenix International, told Mashable that if Bluefin-21 finds what might be a debris field, someone will switch out the vehicle’s sonar instruments with photo-taking equipment and send it back down to see if the clutter comes from the Malaysia Airlines plane. Bluefin-21 scans from side-to-side, and can spend about 16 hours at the bottom before coming up to re-juice. The ability to swap equipment is key to why this particular drone wound up searching for flight MH370. “It’s easily transported, unlike a lot of the other AUVs that are one piece,” Gibson said. “You can’t disassemble them, you need a special launch and recovery system to get them in and out of the water and everything else, and they’re quite heavy.” The ’21’ refers to the drone’s 21-inch diameter, according to the Bluefin Robotics website. It’s a little over 16 feet long and weighs around 1,650 pounds when it’s not in the water. Once it hits its lowest depth, the vehicle travels about three nautical miles per hour and can scan about 15 square miles of ocean floor per day. It stores all that information into its four gigabytes of memory. Despite the technical hiccup early on April 16, Bluefin-21 was redeployed later that day. Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/04/16/underwater-drone-mh370/
A pilot practices flying his "quadcopter" drone while wearing goggles connected to the small camera seen at the bottom center of the craft.Image: Mel Evans/Associated Press An unidentified drone flew dangerously close the flightpath at Vancouver’s international airport on Monday, prompting a search by police. The drone was flying over a runway when someone at air traffic control spotted it, according to local reports. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched the area, setting up road blocks, but were unable to find the pilot of the drone. The police said they might press charges for mischief and criminal negligence, if they do. “It puts people in danger and puts them at risk, puts the community at risk,” RCMP Sgt. Cam Kowalski said, according to CBC. “It’s incredibly dangerous and incredibly stupid, so we will investigate this every way that we possibly can.” This is the second time in less than a year that a drone has flown close to Vancouver’s airport. Last November, someone posted a video of a landing airplane shot from a drone, which prompted an investigation by Canada’s transportation agency. Canada has relatively lax rules concerning the use of drones. If the flying robot is under 77 pounds, its pilot can fly it freely as long as he or she keeps it within line of sight and doesn’t fly it too close to populated areas or restricted airspace. In the U.S., on the other hand, drones can’t be flown closer than 5 miles from an airport. Despite this rule, similar incidents have happened in the United States. Last year, an airline pilot spotted a drone a few miles from New York City’s JFK airport. More recently, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration revealed that a drone and an American Airlines jet came very close to crashing into each other 2,300 feet above the ground near the Tallahassee Regional Airport in Florida. For more on Mashable‘s coverage of unmanned aerial vehicles, check out Drone Beat. Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/07/02/drone-flies-dangerously-close-to-planes-at-canadian-airport/
Image: Amazon Amazon drones aren’t taking off anytime soon — at least not until the Federal Aviation Administration says otherwise. On Monday, in a document inviting public comment on drone policy, the FAA clarified that delivering packages using a drone isn’t legal. The agency didn’t mention Amazon in the document specifically. But the FAA seemed to suggest that Amazon — like every other business — falls under its regulations which, they say, already prohibits the commercial use of drones. Amazon, though, was unmoved. This “has no effect on our plans,” said Paul Misener, Vice President of Global Public Policy for Amazon. “This is about hobbyists and model aircrafts, not Amazon.” In its “Notice of Interpretation with Request for Comment,” the FAA included a list of activities that are not permitted under current regulations, including “delivering packages to people for a fee,” as first noted by Ars Technica. In a footnote, the FAA clarified that even if the shipping is free or offered as part of a “purchase or other offer,” it still would be considered a commercial use of drones and thus not allowed. Brendan Schulman, a lawyer who specializes in drones, said the FAA is trying to reassert its authority by reiterating that these kinds of uses are not permitted. The legal status of drones in the U.S. is complicated. According to the FAA, only amateurs and people with a special FAA permission — a so-called Certificate of Authority — are legally permitted to fly drones, though that has been disputed. This spring, a federal Appeals Court judge ruled that FAA drone regulation isn’t valid since the agency didn’t ask for public comment when initially drafting the drone rules, which is a federal requirement. The FAA is appealing the ruling and, in the meantime, insists that no commercial use of drones is allowed. The agency is supposed to publish new rules on drones by 2015, and developers are in a race to be ready with products for what is believed will be a multi-billion dollar market. In the meantime, it has allowed some universities, research organizations and law-enforcement agencies to use drones in a limited way. On June 10, the FAA announced that BP had permission to fly drones, the first time a company was granted permission to fly a drone over American land. BONUS: Drones vs. Government: Who Owns America’s Skies? Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/06/24/faa-amazon-drones-2/
