PrefBlog

Assiduous Reader Adrian2 sends me a link to a discussion of drones in Engineering school:

Among the biggest adopters of drones, and experimenters with them, have been universities. As the director of the University of California system’s Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft System Safety – effectively the drone headquarters of our whole 10-campus system – I have an excellent view of the drone industry’s past, present and future.
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Some introductory engineering classes involve students building and flying drones; more advanced students learn about flight dynamics and algorithms that help drones stay aloft.

In recent years, though, our engineering departments are focusing less on building the aircraft and more on improving safety, navigation and ability to carry equipment that allows drones to help with different tasks.

For example, researchers are developing navigation systems that don’t rely on GPS satellites. This could help allow drones to navigate autonomously inside buildings, in deep canyons, underground or other places where GPS signals are unavailable or unreliable.
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Another research group is working on ways for drones to help detect gas leaks from oil pipelines. With millions of miles of pipelines across the country, that is a monumental task. Attaching methane-sniffing sensors to drones could make it much easier: Autonomous drones could fly the routes of every pipeline nearly constantly, registering the location and volume of leaks, and alerting repair and cleanup crews.
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For example, drones with special thermal cameras are allowing researchers to investigate water consumption rates of several varieties of crops in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The drones’ data collection is so detailed that the scholars can count individual melons, allowing much better estimates of crop yield.
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For instance, when monitoring giant sequoias, a team of five to seven people would have to map the area, which would take about a week. A drone flight has been able to replace that work with a two-minute flight. That makes it easier to track how the trees are growing and responding to changes in their environment.

There will be some Assiduous Readers, of course, who hate drones and hate it when I talk about them. For you guys, I recommend Siberian Tigers.

I remember once trying to find a chart showing the federal deficit during the nineties, to buttress a point I was making on social media. I couldn’t find one … so in memory of that wasted hour, here’s a federal deficit chart from Bloomberg:

Click for Big

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2017 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.