RBR50 company Boeing says the secretive robotic process it’s developing to change the way it builds the fuselage on 777 planes is in the final phase of testing and production. The Fuselage Automated Upright Build (FAUB), designed by fellow RBR50 company KUKA Robotics, allows fuselage sections to be built using automated, guided robots that will…

Boeing intends to dramatically change the way the plane?s metal hull is built.

First impressions of what’s new in autonomous aerial, ground and underwater technology

iRobot Corp. received a $7.4 million order from the U.S. military for Small Unmanned Ground Vehicles (SUGV), which the company expects will be delivered by the end of June.

Whenever a company sets out to develop a new product, the process can often begin with an engineering team huddled in seclusion, working out the design details. Once they’re done, it’s up to the marketing department to position the product and add sufficient sizzle so end users want to buy it. Management consultant and author…

The UAS services contract includes ground control and support.

LaserMotive is pioneering the use of laser power beaming systems, a technology that has the potential for use in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other types of applications. The privately held company, based in Kent, Wash., took top honors at NASA’s 2009 Power Beaming Challenge competition and is poised to release its first prototype device.…

Naval Air Systems Command contract calls for a 24-month engineering, manufacturing and development phase to build and test Insitu’s Integrator unmanned aircraft system.

Software and hardware teams must complete tasks that test autonomous manipulation capabilities while leveraging lower-cost design.

Travails of airship developer Sanswire illustrate the potential and the pitfalls of the nascent, lighter-than-air, persistent surveillance platform market.

AAI Corp., an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, announced in February that it was expanding its unmanned aircraft systems fee-for-service efforts to included civil, commercial, and scientific entities, as well as military customers. This announcement acknowledges a growing worldwide trend in the unmanned aerial systems (UAS) market-the leasing of…

The military unmanned aerial systems (UAS) industry continues to boom and bloom. The “boom” results from a market that is rapidly growing in both revenue and the number of deployed systems. New applications–prototyped, developed, and fielded–provide the “bloom.” Here’s a case in point: On March 19, 2010 the U.S. Navy posted a Request-for-Information (RIA) for…

There will be no autonomous or remotely controlled passenger 747s, but there will soon be unmanned aircraft used for reconnaissance and surveillance certified for use in U.S. airspace. The first steps have been taken, including two successful test flights of an unmanned aircraft controlled by a flight management system (FMS) certified for commercial flight. On…

Summary: The ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have driven interest and investment in unmanned aerial vehicles. While a great deal of research into aspects of small UAV and M-UAV technology is going on at university-affiliated research centers and private labs, much of the money for the research, and potential demand for product, is coming…

PaR, which stands for Programmed and Remote, was formed by a group of General Mills engineers

Lockheed Martin(LM) partnered with the Air Force Test Pilot School and successfully landed an F-16 Falcon using only computer controls. The announcement signals 1) that after a slow start, Lockheed is very much focused on the UAV market, 2) the company has the technical capability to develop unmanned F-35 combat aircraft, and 3) LM can…