Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) has become the first airport in the United States to deploy autonomous robotic cleaners equipped with ultraviolet (UV) lights that augment their traditional cleaning tools. PIT and Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Robotics have partnered to deploy a pair of autonomous floor scrubbers that clean floors in an ultra-efficient manner. According to Katherine Karolick, senior vice president of Information Technology for Pittsburgh International Airport, using UV is part of a strategic airport-wide approach to cleaning as airport officials look to incorporate UV disinfecting technology in other ways such as on handrails of escalators and moving walkways, elevator buttons and other high-touch areas.

In support of Human Rights Watch’s mission of investigating human rights abuses around the world, Parrot has announced that it will provide the organization with its ANAFI drones and advanced software and technical support to help it accomplish its goals.  As part of a Human Rights Watch investigation into ISIS atrocities in northern Syria, Parrot recently provided its ANAFI drones and on-call support for piloting and technical assistance. The UAS helped capture aerial imagery and 3D data of the al-Hota gorge near Raqqa, which is a suspected mass grave site used by ISIS. Due to the dangerous terrain and steep cliffs of al-Hota, drones were the safest way to capture imagery at the bottom of the gorge.

A team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed a system called “Conduct-A-Bot,” which pilots a robot’s movement using human muscle signals from wearable sensors. The team says that Conduct-A-Bot could potentially be used for various scenarios, including navigating menus on electronic devices or supervising autonomous robots.  “We envision a world in which machines help people with cognitive and physical work, and to do so, they adapt to people rather than the other way around,” explains Daniela Rus, MIT professor and director of CSAIL, and co-author on a paper about the system.

With ambitions of designing technologies that help overcome the challenges faced by UAS and remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), UAV Navigation is helping research and develop innovative and cutting-edge flight control technologies that address what the company describes as the “need of the hour.” UAV Navigation’s Research and Development Project, Visual Navigation System (VNS), largely reduces the accumulated positional error during Dead-Reckoning Navigation.