Using WiFi Drones to Improve Communication During Disaster Relief #drone #droneday
Electrical engineers Shengli Fu and Yan Wan from the University of North Texas developed drone prototypes that will fly in pairs and provide wifi during disaster relief efforts. via techly:
Typical wireless connections have a range of about a hundred meters. Fu, Wan, and their colleagues have developed technology that allowed the drones to provide wireless connection access within a range of up to five kilometers or just a little over three miles.
What the researchers did was to equip each of the drones with a directional antenna that can rotate and adjust automatically to create and maintain a strong signal. The drones fly out in pairs because one is made to land in the danger zone or disaster area while the other drone is situated in line of sight of the first drone and within three kilometers or almost two miles. The two drones communicate with each other to provide network access to victims, stranded people, and rescue workers – facilitating faster and more efficient rescue efforts.
Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
