Drones

Bridge to Sicily - Construction scheduled to start this year A ride from mainland Italy to Sicily takes hours, as you have to take a ferry across the Medina Strait. But this is about to change: The world’s longest suspension bridge shall connect Sicily to the rest of Italy. The bridge shall span a record of 3.3km. As a suspension bridge, it shall be especially resistant against earthquakes. Construction is supposed to start in 2026. Once finished, it can carry 6,000 cars per hour and additionally 200 trains per day. Autonomous eVTOL supplies offshore oil rig in China Chinese company Autoflight tested their fully electric eVTOL that can carry up to 400kg of load. The purpose of this autonomous drone is to support offshore oil rigs. Current ways of supplying them are either via ship, which can take up to ten hours or more, or via helicopter, which is very expensive. Thus a fully electric and autonomous drone could save lots of time and money. The drone fills a similar niche as the MightlyFly about which I wrote in July. As soon as these drone types become reliable and economical, they are goint to reshape many industries. Metrocosmos - a fascinating look into the underground This week I watched the documentary Metrocosmos by Filmmaker Timo Novotny. In this five-part documentary, Timo takes us on a journey into the underground of Paris, Prague, Berlin, Vienna and Naples. We learn about the fact that the metro in Naples is one of the metros with the steepest gradiants. Or that the length of the Paris metro, which is already one of the largest in the world, is currently in the progress of being extended to twice the track length! On this journey we also meet all kind of people in the underground, from the construction workers who built the tunnels, over designers who create the visual communication concept, to the urban explorers who find abandoned places all over the networks. All of this is presented in a captivating visual style, combined with a hypnotic soundtrack. This is a must-watch for all subway afficinados. The videos are currently available (in German) on the ARD Mediathek. Title Image by the Messina Strait Bridge Company.

Autonomous Drones Perform Inventory in Warehouse A subsidiary of Hyuandai Motors now uses drones to perform inventory in their warehouses. It reduces the time for an inventory by 90% to 30 Minutes. The drones fly autonomously and orient themselves with their cameras - no GPS required. Seems like a perfect way to free humans from boring and repetitive work. Military Transport Drone Carries Freight Almost 1,000km Company MightyFly of California presents an autonomous transport drone. It can fly freight of 220kg for almost 1,000km and take off and land vertically. It is intended for military applications, but can also have civilian use, for instance in disaster relieve. Watch this video to get a first impression. Should this mode of transport prove reliable and efficient, I see the potential to profoundly change freight transport. Imagine a company urgently needs some extra parts from their supplier – they can have them within the hour if they have such a drone. Amazing! Autonomous Submarine for Drug Trafficking When I think of submarines, I think of boats full of soldiers, hunting the enemy or carrying rockets. Transport of people or goods do not come to my mind - even though hypersonic submarines might be used this way in the future. Yet it appears my imagination has not been vivid enough. Submarines, or at least “semisubmersibles”, are alreaddy in active use for freight transport. The use is neither military nor civilian. It is for drug transport. From this article I learned there are actual shipyards in the Columbian jungle. The semisubmersibles carry cocaine and other drugs from Columbia to other countries in America, and now across the globe. Nowadays, these boats can even be unmanned, using Starlink for communication and navigation. Ingenious – and worrying. How can we protect ourselves from such boats, be it for them carrying drugs or even other malign payloads such as explosives? Title Image is a screenshot from the video that MightyFly released on Youtube.

Drought, drones and maglevs: These are the transportation news stories I found noteworthy in the last two weeks.

Delivery drones have been in the news for the past few years. Now they are starting to be used in the real world. In the Chinese high-tech city of Shenzen, delivery drones are now delivering food.