Artificial Intelligence is a quickly expanding technology projected to help make SEO tools and strategies more valuable and informative for businesses in the coming years. Digital marketing and A.I. work together to enhance developers' and marketers' ability to engage in different activities.
Today, A.I. is used for more than just market research. It can categorize and classify data much faster and more efficiently than any market research organization. One reason for this is that it's not using static methods for data collection.
Improved Content with the Help of A.I.
The purpose of A.I. in content marketing can vary significantly. It can help digital marketers make better sense of all the data available online, speed up the process of content creation, and develop an effective content strategy, among other benefits.
How U.S. Small Businesses Are Looking to Grow Again After Two Years Of Uncertainty
Some of the specific ways that A.I. will benefit and impact content marketing include:
The Use of Predictive Intelligence for Creating Unique Experiences
Predictive intelligence allows your business to understand the needs of their customers better and create custom content that meets those interests and wants.
Continue reading: https://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/the-impact-of-ai-on-search-engine-optimization.html

Today's world of work is moving fast, and the most successful leaders have a laser focus on the future, one in which change is constant and inevitable. And as technology and automation continue to transform the way we work, that future is nearer than ever before.
In a time when the pace of change is accelerating, the presence of creative excellence for businesses is crucial for success. However, it is easier said than done. Creative excellence with humans alone has its setbacks, preventing it from reaching its full potential.
That's where artificial intelligence comes in. AI is an extraordinary force for creative excellence. The power of AI to improve creativity is just beginning to be tapped. It can help artists and designers create on a previously unimaginable scale and transform how we interact with creative content. AI can also make creative workflows more efficient and effective by removing menial tasks from the creative process, uncovering new insights about what people want to see and using data to make content more compelling for audiences.
A new frontier of creative possibility lies at the crossroads of creativity and technology. It's an exciting time to be creative — the doors to innovation are open, and those with bold visions stand to gain the most.
The tools that have facilitated our determination to be in control of everything are now helping us break out of our molds and explore uncharted territory, leading us to all sorts of possibilities that we would never have stumbled upon on our own.
We can now use AI in tandem with human intelligence to create works that defy conventional categorization and redefine what it means to be creative in today's world. Here's how to cultivate a culture of creative excellence with AI for your business.
1. Transform creative workflows with intelligent technologies
Artificial intelligence (AI) enables a new era of creative excellence that will transform creative workflows, unleash new value and create new competitive advantages. By providing deep insights into customer desires and needs, AI can help companies rapidly prototype and test concepts to identify which ones most resonate with consumers. It can also aid in executing campaigns and measuring the results, enabling continuous optimization against marketing objectives.
The cognitive tools that make up artificial intelligence can transform creative workflows. Cognitive technologies can amplify human creativity by enabling creative professionals — such as designers, writers and filmmakers — to spend less time on repetitive processes or tasks that require rote memory and instead focus on higher-value, more imaginative work.
Continue reading: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/426406

Scientists develop a drone that can make an ultrafast transition from underwater to aerial vehicle .
A new drone design could pave the way for ultrafast transitions between air and water. 
The robot, designed by scientists from Beihang University, Imperial College London and Empa, is capable of switching from an underwater drone to an aerial vehicle in less than one second. This capability could allow it to make great advances in biological and environmental monitoring in marine ecosystems, such as surveying ocean pollution in the open sea.
The drone’s suction disc was inspired by the remora fish – a family of species known for their adhesive discs, which help them catch a ride on marine creatures including whales and sharks. This enables the drone to hitchhike on wet or dry moving objects to significantly reduce its power consumption, the scientists have explained in a new study published in Science Robotics.
Its new propeller design is the feature that allows it to transition between mediums faster than most prior aerial-aquatic robots.
Until now, despite the potential use of untethered drones for research expeditions and wildlife surveys in remote environments, the lack of external power sources has often been a concern. To address this limitation, the scientists 3D-printed an aerial-aquatic untethered robot that reduces its power consumption through hitchhiking. Moreover, the remote-controlled robot’s disc can stick to wet and dry surfaces with different textures, even on moving objects.
Designed by a team of scientists from China, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the versatile robot and its bio-inspired adhesive disc could be adapted for open-environment aerial and aquatic surveillance research.
Continue reading: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/05/drone-transitions-from-air-to-water-in-less-than-a-second/

Recent approval of beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone operation in the Netherlands is a huge step forward for drone inspection activities across Europe. 
The Percepto drone-in-a-box, which carries out checks of storage tanks, is designed to work autonomously, with operators ready to take over, if necessary, from a control room at a remote location. The system is pre-programmed for different inspection flights, and images and other data can be compared between one flight and another to see the change in the data and the imagery of the different tanks the drone is inspecting.  
In the Netherlands, Percepto partners with Falcker, a Dutch company that specialises in tank inspections at Rotterdam, Amsterdam and other large ports. Falcker uses the Percepto system to autonomously inspect tanks to detect damage or maintenance issues that could spell trouble for the companies operating the tanks. 
Being an autonomous system, Percepto needs approval to fly beyond the operator’s visual line of sight – something that is not allowed in the basic regulation and requires specific approvals. The good news is that this approval will make it easier to operate in similar situations elsewhere in Europe.  
Over the past two years, Europe has shifted to a new regulatory framework led by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The goal is to harmonise the regulation throughout all EASA member states. The new rules will allow operators to work more freely across borders and in different countries on the continent.  
The new regulatory framework makes it possible for operators to apply for complex BVLOS missions, possibly flying drones over people with different levels of risk. The framework includes all aspects of risk mitigation that need to be used in a mission to ensure safety. The regulator can then confidently approve a given operation, knowing that it belongs to a given class.  
Percepto and Falcker recently went through the new approval process with ILT, the Dutch Civil Aviation Authority. “We submitted what we planned to do – the concept of the operations, what we wanted to do with the system and where we wanted to do it,” said Avi Lozowick, director of global policy and government Affairs at Percepto.
Continue reading: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252518409/Netherlands-approves-beyond-visual-line-of-sight-inspection-drones
 

We’re working toward a future where passenger air taxis and drone deliveries are to become a part of everyday mobility. But how will these autonomous systems access important information, such as deteriorating weather conditions, to complete each flight safely? To address this issue, NASA researchers are exploring the creation of a decentralized data and reasoning hub that would help autonomous aircraft to make critical safety decisions rapidly.
NASA’s Data & Reasoning Fabric (DRF) would work in a manner similar to how people use navigation apps to access different kinds of data – maps, accident reports, traffic conditions, roadwork status, etc. Just like these apps help us decide the best route to take at the time, NASA’s DRF would send aircraft information tailored for their missions.
How will NASA DRF for drones and air taxis work?
Think of DRF as a digital “marketplace” where providers of weather services, mapping and surveying firms, air traffic management, etc., can come together to offer data and reasoning services to aircraft operators via digital agreements. In turn, operators can also offer the data and reasoning resources they have acquired.
So, when a delivery drone connects to DRF, it would be able to access information from a weather station, a detailed map from city authorities, and the locations of nearby aircraft – all assembled using data from the marketplace.
Continue reading: https://dronedj.com/2022/05/24/drones-air-taxi-safety-nasa-drf/

Hacked bank and Twitter accounts, malicious power outages and attempts to tamper with medical records threaten the security of the nation’s health, money, energy, society and infrastructure. Harnessing the laws of nature – namely quantum physics – a cutting-edge teleportation technology is taking cybersecurity to new, “unhackable” heights using miniscule particles of light or “beams.”
Florida Atlantic University’s Warner A. Miller, Ph.D., in concert with Qubitekk and L3Harris , is leading the United States’ efforts to deliver the first drone-based, mobile quantum network to seamlessly maneuver around buildings, inclement weather and terrain and quickly adapt to changing environments such as warfare.
Together with Qubitekk, an award-winning leader in manufacturing entangled photon sources and other hardware for networking quantum processors and sensors, FAU has been entrusted by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense to develop the project. 
The network includes a ground station, drones, lasers and fiber optics to share quantum-secured information. Today’s telecommunication networks use fiber optics, connected by laser beams from the ground and between planes and satellites — called fiber and free space optical networks. Drones are used to save lives, secure infrastructure, help the environment and thwart hostile military advances such as the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“The combination of quantum communication and unmanned aerial systems or UAS in this project represents an important advance in the Air Force’s efforts to create fieldable quantum systems for the warfighter,” said A. Matthew Smith, Ph.D., a senior research physicist at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate. “Additionally, the potential of secure communication from a portable quantum communication UAS in contested environments represents important future capabilities for the Air Force.”
Miller is a professor of physics in FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science and a retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Air Force, who served honorably for 28 years and received a Meritorious Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster. He played a critical role in recently obtaining a $1.5 million Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) federal grant awarded to Qubitekk. Miller also is collaborating with L3Harris, an agile global aerospace and defense technology innovator that has been involved in the project since 2019.
The team is collaborating with the U.S. Air Force to combine expertise from academia, including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, government and industry with the future potential to scale up the project for larger applications with larger aerial platforms, as well as other ground and maritime platforms.
“The contract award represents a new stage in the development of two technologies. For quantum, it’s a major step toward creating hack-proof quantum communication networks that will eventually span the globe, including in space. For drones and UAVs, it’s another milestone in their evolution as the workhorses of the Air Force for a wide range of missions and capabilities,” said Arthur Herman, Ph.D., senior fellow and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative at Hudson Institute and one of the nation’s foremost quantum experts in defense, energy and technology issues.
Continue reading: https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/quantum-drone-security

There’s no question that the brains inside Skydio drones are rather impressive. These things are masters of AI and autonomy, capable of carrying out tasks that can prove challenging for other drones. The team, naturally, knows everything there’s to know about building autonomous robots at scale. And now, it’s ready to share its learnings with the wider robotics community by making public SymForce – the library that powers the motion planner and computer vision systems used by Skydio drones.
SymForce is the result of five years of development by Skydio’s autonomy team in an environment where performance and code maintainability are crucial.
Written in C++, with Python bindings for experimentation, SymForce makes it possible to code a problem once, experiment with it symbolically, generate optimized code, and then run optimization problems based on the original problem definition.
The code generation library is also capable of adding components like 3D geometry types, camera models, noise models, and novel singularity handling techniques that make it possible to model complex robotics problems as symbolic expressions.
Continue reading: https://dronedj.com/2022/05/25/skydio-symforce/

Things are a little slower at the Virgnia Tech Drone Park by the end of May, when the annual April crush of school tours and research projects and class visits and outreach events and drone races has receded. But earlier in the spring, the mild weather and a packed events calendar brought a steady stream of visitors that kept Madeline Hower, Madelyn Johnson, and Cason Kerrick even busier than their full undergraduate schedules already did. 
Johnson just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from the College of Engineering. Kerrick and Hower wrapped up their third years in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Kerrick in aerospace engineering and Hower picking up majors in both disciplines. Together, the three interns helped shoulder the load of keeping the drone education facility, with its towering net and adjacent lab and classroom, running smoothly. 
The drone park hosted nearly 1,000 individual visitors this year, including local school groups, researchers, students from 18 Virginia Tech departments, and companies. Sarah Macey, the park’s manager, said it's because of the interns that the park is able to serve so many people and support such a diverse range of projects.
"They are an extraordinary group of students," Macey said. "They bring an incredible level of professionalism and talent to their work, and combine it with a student's fresh perspective that makes drone technology feel more relatable and accessible for many of the people who come to the park." 
The drone park, with a net that soars 85 feet high and a footprint the size of a football field, is one of the largest in the country, and it's in high demand. It opened in 2018, under the umbrella of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, and since then its success has been fueled in part by a string of dedicated undergraduate interns. 
Johnson has been there almost the whole time. She met Tombo Jones, the director of Virginia Tech’s FAA-designated drone test site, at a career fair in the spring of 2018; he connected her with Macey, who also runs the test site’s training programs. 
Hower and Kerrick found their way to the drone park in 2021 through an honors course on drone technology in public safety, where they collaborated with Virginia Tech police on a prototype design and developed an online course covering drone use on college campuses. They worked with Macey and some of the test site's engineers on these projects, and Macey was so impressed that she recruited both of them. 
Continue reading: https://vtx.vt.edu/articles/2022/05/ictas-droneparkinterns-2022.html

When quadcopters with cameras vastly improved in the late 2000s and early 2010s, US regulators and many other governments around the world got caught with their shorts down. Smartphones drove the cost of sensors and connectivity components down, and then cheaper sensors, better wireless transmission technology, and mobile devices that could give you a live bird’s eye view suddenly made it very easy and safe to remotely operate a small aircraft. This proved to not only be useful for taking pretty pictures, but also gave a number of industries and governmental efforts opportunities to make their work easier, and more importantly, save lives.
The environmental benefits of sUAS (commonly known as drones, even if that is a bad term for what they really are) are incalculable. Yes, many things drone pilots do just wouldn’t happen if manned aircraft had to be used instead. For example, a real estate agent isn’t going to shell out the big bucks for a plane or helicopter unless it’s an unusually expensive house. But they’re still replacing manned aircraft and their fossil fuel emissions with a relatively tiny electric aircraft in many cases, and it’s a growing phenomenon.
In other words, electric-powered aviation is already here.
Taming The Wild West
When lower cost unmanned aircraft came on the scene, US law on the matter wasn’t that clear. The FAA tried to require everyone using a drone commercially to get a regular pilot’s license or jump through a bunch of other expensive and difficult hoops, but they were mostly ignored. Then, they lost in court when they attempted to enforce their expansive interpretation of the law, and the law on operating drones temporarily became a very “wild west.”
The popularity of drones, a large community of unlicensed commercial drone users, and the legal grey area put federal regulators in a position where they couldn’t create rules that were difficult to follow. If they did do that, they’d only push commercial drone operators to just keep doing what they were doing, and many of them would probably have banded together to take the FAA to court endlessly. So, they had to come up with a process to improve drone safety, but also make it easy for drone operators to comply with the rules.
The result of this challenge was actually a pretty decent set of regulations (as far as US federal regulations go). In 2016, they opened up the process to take a test at a local testing center, apply for a license, get a background check, and then become a legitimate operator. They didn’t require a specific training course, leaving it up to the applicant whether they wanted to sign up for a commercial test-prep program or self-study.
To stay current, a drone pilot needed to take the test again every two years, giving the FAA an opportunity to update pilots on new policies and laws via test study.
Continue reading: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/25/commercial-suas-drone-operation-keeps-getting-easier/

Now is a great time to be a drone pilot. It’s also a great time to become a drone pilot.
Job opportunities for qualified operators are expanding in industries such as construction, energy, package delivery, and public safety. What’s more, leading drone companies and UAV-related organizations are offering training programs to ensure that the industry will have the pilots it needs as it continues to grow.
Drone pilot jobs can be challenging, rewarding—and lucrative. A review of opportunities for drone pilots stated that median annual salary in the field is $58,280. However, the report said, some pilots can command as much as “six-figures flying drones commercially.”
Where can you find these jobs? A February 2022 Commercial UAV News article asserted that dozens of industries will be looking for talented pilots in the coming years, but demand will be particularly high in the fields of surveying and mapping, delivery, construction, inspection, and security. Here’s what experienced pilots and those new to the field need to know about those industries:

• Surveying & Mapping: Pilots in surveying and mapping need to understand sophisticated technologies as well as know how to fly their vehicles. That’s because the surveying and mapping industry is using drones connected with specialized software and imaging equipment to capture aerial images and thousands of data points. It is recommended that pilots seeking work in these fields invest in high quality equipment and receive advanced training on imaging and data analysis.
• Drone Delivery: One of the many lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic was that more and more consumers and business want fast, inexpensive deliveries. To fill that need, major companies like Walmart, UPS, Flytrex, and Amazon are investing heavily in the drone delivery space. Smaller companies are also looking to add drones to their delivery platforms. All of these firms will need pilots. If you’re interested, just remember that you’ll need special FAA certification to operate a delivery drone.
• Construction: Opportunities abound for qualified pilots working in the construction space. Drone operators conduct pre-site surveys, create progress reports, take detailed measurements, plan post-construction marketing, and even work on promotional videos and photo shoots. During a recent Commercial UAV News webinar, Jonathan Beaty of Kiewit Geospatial Services reported that drone operators working in construction tend to come from inside the industry itself. He said that many individuals who become construction drone pilots perform other roles in an operation, and they learn UAV piloting skills as part of an expanded role.
• Inspection: The fields of agriculture, industrial, utilities, energy, and mining have been using drones for inspections for many years. Using sophisticated cameras and sensors, drone operators may be called on to assess and monitor assets such as pipelines, powerlines, irrigation equipment and more. Just like work in the construction and surveying and mapping sectors, work in this industry requires a knowledge of both piloting and imaging technology.
• Security: Security operations use uncrewed vehicles to monitor secure facilities, help with surveillance of highways, coastlines, and borders, and provide crucial intelligence to ensure safety at large public events. As in the construction industry, pilots in this field often start by working in traditional security functions and then receive specific training in drone operations.

So, if you are pursuing a drone pilot career, keep in mind that while there is great potential for interesting, well-paid work, what matters most is making a commitment to a specific industry or application that will enable operations to be performed in a faster, cheaper, or safer way. To move ahead, be sure to do your research into the different industries that are adopting UAVs and find the field that is the “right fit” for you.
Continue reading: https://www.commercialuavnews.com/assessing-the-options-and-opportunities-for-drone-pilots-in-2022

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (“UAS”), commonly known as Drones, offer tremendous benefits to almost all sectors of the economy like – agriculture, mining, infrastructure, surveillance, emergency response, transportation, geo-spatial mapping, defence, law enforcement, etc.[1] To regulate the usage of these UAS’, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) published the Unmanned Aircraft System Rules in March 2021.  After taking into consideration the suggestions and objections by the stakeholders the rules were perceived to be restrictive as they involved considerable paperwork, required permissions for every drone flight, and very few “free to fly” green zones were available. Based on the feedback, the Government notified the liberalized drone Rules, 2021 in August 2021. These rules were made in supersession to Unmanned Aircraft System Rules, 2021 by rectifying the inconsistencies in the UAV Rules, 2021.
 

• Features of the Rules: 

1. Applicability of the Rules:
   [/LIST=1]
   Under Rule 2(1) it is provided that the Rules apply to all persons owning or possessing, or engaged in leasing, operating, transferring, or maintaining an Unmanned Aircraft System (Drone) in India and all drones that are registered in India or being operated for the time being, in or over India. Rule 2(3) clarifies that it does not apply to drones used by the naval, military, or air forces of the Union.
   1. Online Portal for Management:
      [/LIST=1]
      Rule 3(g) defines Digital Sky Platform which has been established as an online platform hosted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (“DGCA”), for the management of various drone-related activities in India.
      1. Meaning of Drones:
         [/LIST=1]
         Under Rule 3(i) a drone has been defined as an unmanned aircraft system, and Rule 3(zb) states that a UAS is an aircraft that can operate autonomously or can be operated remotely without a pilot on board.
         Drones have been classified under Rule 5 based on the maximum all-up weight including payload as under:
         • Nano Drone: Less than or equal to 250 grams.
         • Micro Drone: Greater than 250 grams and less than or equal to 2 kilograms.
         • Small Drone: Greater than 2 kilograms and less than or equal to 25 kilograms.
         • Medium Drone: Greater than 25 kilograms and less than or equal to 150 kilograms; and
         • Large Drone: Greater than 150 kilograms.
         Rule 2(2) clarifies that in case, the weight is more than 500 kilograms, the provisions of the Aircraft Rules, 1937 shall apply instead of the drone Rules.
          
         1. Mandate of general registration:
            [/LIST=1]
            Rule 14 mandates the registration of individual drones on the Digital Sky Platform and obtaining a Unique Identification Number (“UIN”). The Rules further mandate registration of existing UAS. It states that a person, who owns a drone, manufactured in India or imported into India on or before the 30th day of November 2021, to make within thirty-one days falling after the said date
            Continue reading: https://legaldesire.com/taking-flight-the-drone-rules/

By David Guggina, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Automation, Walmart U.S.
We continue to expand our delivery operations to help customers get the items they need when they need them, and it’s been an exciting journey. From Express delivery, where customers can have items delivered to their doorsteps in as little as two hours, to InHome, where they can get those orders placed right into their refrigerators, we’re proud to offer customers multiple options that help them save time and money.
One solution we’ve been working on over the last year is delivery via drone. Today we’re announcing we’ll be expanding our DroneUp delivery network to 34 sites by the end the year, providing the potential to reach 4 million U.S. households across six states – Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia. This provides us the ability to deliver over 1 million packages by drone in a year.
Between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., customers will be able to order from tens of thousands of eligible items, such as Tylenol, diapers and hot dog buns, for delivery by air in as little as 30 minutes. For a delivery fee of $3.99, customers can order items totaling up to 10 pounds, so simply put, if it fits safely it flies.
After completing hundreds of deliveries within a matter of months across our existing DroneUp hubs, we’ve seen firsthand how drones can offer customers a practical solution for getting certain items, fast. More importantly, we’ve seen a positive response from our customers that have used the service. In fact, while we initially thought customers would use the service for emergency items, we’re finding they use it for its sheer convenience, like a quick fix for a weeknight meal. Case in point: The top-selling item at one of our current hubs is Hamburger Helper.
Participating stores will house a DroneUp delivery hub inclusive of a team of certified pilots, operating within FAA guidelines, that safely manage flight operations for deliveries. Once a customer places an order, the item is fulfilled from the store, packaged, loaded into the drone and delivered right to their yard using a cable that gently lowers the package.
The customer has always been at the center of our focus at Walmart, and we look for partners that are as laser-focused on customer experience as we are. DroneUp has been a reliable partner as we’ve tested this solution and their capabilities will enable our business to scale with speed while maintaining a high caliber of safety and quality.
Continue reading: https://www.suasnews.com/2022/05/were-bringing-the-convenience-of-drone-delivery-to-4-million-u-s-households-in-partnership-with-droneup/

 Red Cat Holdings, Inc.  a hardware-enabled software provider to the drone industry, announces that it has completed research, development, and production of a four-drone, multi-vehicle system for defense, government, and public safety markets.  
“We have shippable product on hand and are now taking orders for delivery this fall,” said Red Cat Holdings CEO Jeff Thompson. “We are committed to staying at the forefront of our rapidly developing industry, which is why we are excited to be, to our knowledge, the first commercial enterprise to bring a fully operational multi-drone system to market. This is a significant milestone for both our company and the entire drone industry.”
Developed by its subsidiary Teal Drones (Teal), and in close cooperation with strategic partner Autonodyne, LLC, the multi-vehicle package will be offered in two configurations: 4-Ship and 4-Ship+.  Both configurations will allow a single pilot to simultaneously control up to four of Teal’s Golden Eagle units, which is the first drone mass-produced entirely in the U.S. under strict guidelines from the U.S. Department of Defense.
The 4-Ship+ will include two extra Golden Eagle units and an additional linked controller to facilitate handoff of control from one pilot to another. The 4-Ship+ configuration allows a back-up pilot to immediately take over at any time. The additional two drones also allow pilots to bring in units with fresh batteries, while units with drained batteries drop off to be charged – all without breaking up the four-drone flight pattern. This allows for continuous 360-degree surveillance of any target and overcomes the biggest weakness of any drone: limited battery life.
“4-Ship is unlocking our vision for the future of drones,” commented George Matus, founder and CEO of Teal.  “This early technological inflection point will redefine how drones are used across the defense and public safety markets, arguably increasing value by an order of magnitude.”
The 4-Ship is a complete solution that provides operators with actionable information from multiple vehicles at the same time — including the display of four simultaneous video feeds — resulting in faster situational awareness and decision-making in today’s complex environments. It also offers a tremendous savings in manpower, the most expensive component of any drone operation, since four pilots are replaced by just one.
Continue reading: https://uasweekly.com/2022/05/25/red-cat-holdings-becomes-first-commercial-enterprise-to-bring-complete-multi-drone-system-to-market/

I know that the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) goal is to keep everyone safe and not have drones flying here in the U.S. impacting the existing commercial and private aviation assets that are “in the air” now. We are, however, creeping ever slowly towards being latecomers to having the ability to leverage the power of drones to change lives. And I’m not talking about delivering pizza via drones. See this news release for what is happening in Brazil: Drones that deliver critical medical supplies coming to Brazil
Spright, Synerjet announce partnership to serve healthcare market in South American country DENVER, May 24, 2022 – Spright, the new drone division of Air Methods, and Synerjet Corp, a specialist in business aviation in Latin America, have signed an agreement under which the two companies will partner to operate drones to serve the healthcare market in Brazil. Under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by both companies, Synerjet will identify potential healthcare customers in Brazil, manage certifications and route studies, service equipment and provide 19 new drones by early next year, while Spright will handle the operational side of transporting critical medical supplies to healthcare facilities throughout the South American country.
With more than 212 million people, Brazil is the sixth-ranked country in the world by population and the fifth-ranked by total area. Similar to the U.S., the vast majority of Brazil’s population is located in metropolitan areas, with 27.4 million people, or roughly 13%, of the population living in rural areas, many of which cannot be reached by road. This creates formidable challenges in getting healthcare products such as vaccines, blood tests and whole blood to remote healthcare facilities. “We are excited to partner with Synerjet to build an air medical transport business that serves the Brazilian healthcare market,” said Joe Resnik, president of Spright. “I am confident that Synerjet’s infrastructure, equipment and knowledge of Brazilian flight regulations coupled with the professionalism and capabilities of Spright will combine to produce a winning formula that will benefit Brazil’s healthcare providers and large population.”
Continue reading: https://www.govtech.com/em/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/drones-supporting-the-delivery-of-medical-supplies

“I go to these conferences, and I look to the left, I look to the right, and no one looks like me,” said Jakira Jekayinfa-Brown, associate electrical engineer for East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland, California, at the start of a luncheon panel discussion on Women in Technology at this week’s Honeywell User Group (HUG) Americas 2022.
She was joined on stage by host Carrie Sinclair, vice president of customer marketing for performance materials and technologies at Honeywell, and panelists Ethel Nakano, general manager of Syncrude projects for Suncor; Tammie Borders, senior government relations manager at Quantinuum; and Veronica Turner, sales lead for safety solutions with Honeywell Process Solutions. While the panel of women was quite diverse, that’s not replicated for the most part in technology sectors, and the panelists discussed what it’s like always being in the minority and how has the conversation about women has changed over their careers.
“What ignites my passion are the possibilities and the technology that lies ahead,” Jekayinfa-Brown said. As scary as it might be for her to not see others that look like her, she knows, “I’m exactly where I need to be.”
“I know that means the glass ceiling has not been broken, and it’s exciting to know that I get to be a part of that team that breaks it,” Jekayinfa-Brown said. “We will start to be able to come up with better solutions and better technologies that are a reflection of everybody.”
Continue reading: https://www.controlglobal.com/industrynews/2022/hug-6/

Web 3.0 - the decentralized internet - promises a future free of intermediaries and centralized authorities.
Crypto aficionados claim that instead of multi-billion dollar companies controlling every aspect of the internet, Web 3.0 will essentially hand over much of that power to the users. Everything will be powered by networks of decentralized computers rather than being managed via third-party servers. It will be a progressive era where cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will take center stage, driven by the continuous advancement of blockchain technology.
While all of the above sounds amazing, I feel that the Web 3.0 realm - at least, for now - isn’t as decentralized as claimed. The reason is what I call the blockchain trilemma.
At present, the majority of the blockchain networks can only offer two out of three benefits (decentralization, scalability, and security) at any given time. To cater to the increasing number of users and billions of dollars locked across different platforms, blockchain developers are focusing more on offering scalability and security, which has led to a gradual decline in decentralization. Besides, Web 3.0 infrastructure, driven by blockchain-based decentralized applications (dApps) and protocols, relies heavily on APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to communicate with each other.
In this context, who provides these APIs? Obviously, third-party service providers, most of which are highly centralized.  As ironic as it sounds, the truth is that blockchain developers are building decentralized applications using centralized platforms.
Continue reading: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/how-web3-can-live-up-to-its-truly-decentralized-ambitions-this-time-around

Early this year when anything still seemed possible for technology companies, futurists and venture capitalists were enthralled with the idea of building a new internet. Web3, as it became known, was poised to recapture the 1990s promise of a decentralized internet, free from gatekeepers and trillion-dollar platforms.
Cryptocurrencies had the starring role in the Web3 dream. Crypto, in theory, could wrest control from giants like Meta Platforms FB +3.53%  (ticker: FB), Alphabet GOOGL +2.25%  (GOOGL), Amazon.com AMZN +4.99%  (AMZN), and Apple AAPL +2.69%  (AAPL). It would shift our online activities to blockchains—handling everything from payments and trading to videogaming, social media, even real estate. It could also shift the economics to users, giving them financial incentives to govern and secure the networks.
A record $25 billion was plowed into crypto start-ups last year, with another $30 billion on track for this year, according to Bank of America. Even the recent downturn in crypto doesn’t seem to have chilled new investment. This past week, venture-capital firm a16z announced a new crypto fund totaling $4.5 billion.
“We think we are now entering the golden era of web3,” a16z partner Chris Dixon wrote in announcing the investment.
And yet Web3 remains a heavy lift—it’s full of contradictions, glitchy technology, regulatory uncertainty, and competing economic interests. There’s debate over who will “own” it—companies backed by Silicon Valley venture capital, or the users themselves. And the crypto markets’ downturn—wiping out more than $1 trillion in value for tokens this year—makes a blockchain-based web even harder to fathom.
Continue reading: https://www.barrons.com/articles/web3-crypto-coins-startups-51653531787

Over the last few years, the development of blockchain technology brought us new types of digital assets such as stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. These innovations offer the foundations for building new payment rails that can move value across the globe not only in real-time but also at a much lower cost. Unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, stablecoins are significantly less volatile as they are typically pegged to a fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar. Stablecoins also pushed governments to accelerate their exploration of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). While cryptocurrencies rely on decentralized networks for their operations, CBDCs would run on public sector infrastructure and represent a direct liability of the central bank — essentially “digital cash.”
There’s major potential here: digital assets and cryptocurrencies can support new services and create more competition in financial services. For one, they promise lower-cost payments for both domestic and cross-border transfers. They can also facilitate real-time payments, overcoming a significant shortcoming of the U.S. payment system. Moreover, these new assets support programmability, which can be used for conditional payments and more complex applications such as escrow.
At the same time, these technologies — and how they threaten traditional financial intermediaries — has ignited a heated debate. For example, a recent, widely anticipated paper by the Federal Reserve Board acknowledges the significant benefits of digital currencies, but also raises concerns around privacy, operational, cybersecurity, and financial stability risks. Similarly, Gary Gensler, Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, recently nearly doubled his crypto enforcement staff to crack down on what he calls the “wrongdoing in the crypto markets.” The recent collapse of UST, Terra’s Stablecoin — one of the largest stablecoins — illustrates how a failure in one of these systems can cascade throughout the crypto ecosystem. While many stablecoins derive their value from being fully backed by reserves, that was not the case for UST, which instead relied on an algorithm and a second currency, Luna, for stability.
Continue reading: https://hbr.org/2022/05/how-digital-currencies-can-help-small-businesses

Hong Kong-based climate tech startup Allinfra has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Japan’s biggest brokerage firm, Nomura, to expand its software that helps businesses be more environmentally friendly.
Both new and existing investors participated in the funding round, said Allinfra cofounder and CEO Dave Sandor in an announcement on Wednesday. Existing investors include the sustainability-focused UPC Capital Ventures, digital asset-focused BC Group, New York-based VC firm FJ Labs (which backed the likes of Alibaba and Korean fintech billionaire Lee Seung-gun’s Viva Republica), ACRE Investment and blockchain technology company ConsenSys.
Allinfra said the funds will be used to expand its climate change-products, including Allinfra Climate, a dashboard that tracks a company’s environmental preservation performance (such as saving energy from electricty), as well as the tokenization platform Allinfra Digital, which allows investors to buy and sell renewable energy panels and other infrastructures in a digital form.
“Allinfra has always prioritized hiring high-caliber talent motivated to leverage the latest technology for positive climate action,” Sandor said in the announcement. “Over the next few months we’ll be expanding the team across a range of skill sets.”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaydecheung/2022/05/26/blockchain-powered-climate-tech-startup-raises-6-million-in-funding-led-by-nomura/?sh=7b548ce64baf

Recently, the movement for Ethical AI has been gaining steady momentum from academic researchers, social activists, and lawyers. Ethical AI is the development and use of artificial intelligence systems in a manner that is safe, responsible and non-discriminatory. An organization that uses AI ethically would treat user data with respect, collect, store and use it in accordance with user consent, and ensure that the model does not make biased decisions. In the past, seemingly intelligent systems have been known to discriminate; such as the AI system that Amazon was using for hiring decisions was systematically discriminating against women.
Ethical AI is built around the core principles of fairness, transparency, accountability and consent. These principles do seem to make sense for the most part; they put users in control of the data, ensure that there is no discrimination, and enforces through audits and accountability that companies are following best practices and legal regulations. However, ethical AI might not always be the best course of action – especially in cases where the AI is being used for cyber security.
AI for security includes the use of machine learning and data science for a variety of issues like fraud detection, spam filtering, malware analysis and hate speech detection. It is different from other applications of AI (like making hiring decisions) for a multitude of reasons, but principally because of the potential cost of an incorrect decision by the AI, which can be significant in terms of loss of money, data, or sometimes even life.
Continue reading: https://www.freepressjournal.in/technology/ethical-ai-a-challenge-for-security-spplications

In business, as in all facets of life, nothing ever stays the same. Markets boom and bust, consumer tastes shift, and new technologies revolutionize even the most entrenched processes.
Change can be incredibly positive. Change builds resilience, opens us up to new perspectives and creates opportunities we never saw coming.
However, change can also be uncomfortable, and this discomfort feels especially pervasive during this era of rapid technological transformation. Entire industries are being disrupted by automation and artificial intelligence (AI) — from real estate, where algorithms can read millions of homebuyer documents in seconds, to medicine, where AI can read X-rays faster and more accurately than radiologists.
This is as true for finance as it is for any other sector. From the smallest accounting firms to the largest enterprises, automation is a foregone conclusion — particularly in the accounts payable (AP) function, which is notoriously tedious. I have helped dozens of companies navigate these changes, and I've witnessed the full spectrum of employee reactions — from motivation, excitement and quick adoption all the way to skepticism and resistance.
Whatever the reaction, change is nevertheless well underway — and its potential is limitless. From HR executives to CFOs, business leaders must do all they can to help their teams navigate these changes and understand the opportunities they present.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/05/25/how-to-successfully-lead-change-management-in-finance-ai-adoption/?sh=14d560157e21

Decision intelligence is a new field that helps support, augment and automate business decisions by linking data with decisions and outcomes. It uses a combination of methods (e.g., decision mapping and decision theories) and technologies (e.g., machine learning and automation) to improve the way decisions are made in companies. Decision intelligence includes continually evaluating decision outcomes and optimizing them through a feedback system.
The term “decision intelligence” was popularized in Lorien Pratt’s 2019 book, Link: How Decision Intelligence Connects Data, Actions, and Outcomes for a Better World, after Google launched its decision intelligence department in 2018. In October 2021, Gartner analysts identified decision intelligence as one of the most impactful tech trends for 2022.
Why is decision intelligence important?
Companies’ successes depend on decisions. These decisions range from market selection to talent hiring to invoice payment authorization. Nearly three billion business decisions are made annually, and research results by Bain show a 95% correlation between decision effectiveness and financial performance.
However, decision making is fraught with challenges, and important or complex decisions are often made by people without enough information, time or experience. According to findings from McKinsey, 72% of executives report that bad decisions are as frequent as good ones, and the average S&P 500 company wastes an average of $250 million per year due to ineffective decision making.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/05/25/is-decision-intelligence-the-new-ai/?sh=1725320f4e42

The potential use cases of blockchain technology largely complement Africa’s efforts to address its socioeconomic challenges, but the funds to create solutions have been hard to come by in pre-pandemic times.
But a report published recently by Swiss venture capital firm VC CV  in partnership with Standard Bank shows that millions of dollars have started trickling into the continent (pdf) in the form of blockchain financing. According to the study, 41 African blockchain startups in eight countries raised $127 million in 2021. 
Anne Kaluvu, a blockchain expert and lecturer at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya, tells Quartz there is a lot of vested interest on blockchain in Africa currently.
“I believe the efforts that Africans have shown in their creativity and openness to the technology is inspiring a lot of venture capitalists to salivate on what can happen if funds were availed in this market.”
Nigeria, Seychelles, Kenya, and South Africa are the region’s blockchain darlings
96% of the funding went to Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Seychelles but it was in the first quarter of this year when the millions rolled into the continent more, showing promise of an even better year to come.
“Companies raised $91 million in Q1 of 2022, a staggering 1,668% YoY increase from Q1 of the previous year,” the report says.
Continue reading: https://qz.com/africa/2169371/millions-of-dollars-are-rolling-into-africa-to-finance-blokchain-projects/

Ten years ago, the rebels hadn’t won. There was no Web 3. No non-fungible tokens (NFTs), no decentralized finance (DeFi), no decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). No Coinbase, no Ethereum, no a16z Crypto.
Now, in 2022, we have all of these things.
Elon Musk pitches dogecoin on Twitter. The Miami Heat shoot hoops in the FTX Arena. Matt Damon shills crypto to millions during the Super Bowl.
Now our feeds are full of NFT profile pictures, there are tokens worth $100 billion staked across dozens of DeFi ecosystems, and DAOs (almost) buy constitutions and Parisian art. Meanwhile, FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried casually becomes President Joe Biden’s second-largest donor.
Web 3 is the biggest wealth creation event in history. The crypto rebels have won.
But we’re only 10 years in. What will happen in 2040? What does this mean for society? What does this mean for philanthropy?
To understand what will happen in 2040, we will look at three angles:

1. Past: Web 3 in the history of wealth creation events.
2. Present: How crypto whales are leveraging their wealth today.
3. Future: Decentralized solarpunk society.
   [/LIST=1]
   Past: Web 3 in the history of wealth creation events
   A decade ago, crypto billionaires didn’t exist. Now there are dozens of them, with Twitter-optimized acronyms, such as "SBF" for Sam Bankman-Fried and "CZ" for Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
   We’ve seen this before. The old rich give way to the new rich. Emperors like Ghengis Khan and Caesar used to control all wealth.
   Then the Industrial Revolution birthed billionaire oil magnates like John D. Rockefeller and steel magnates like Andrew Carnegie.
   Computers and Web 1 birthed billionaires like Bill Gates and Michael Dell. Web 2 created the elite of today: Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. And now, Web 3 has created SBF and CZ.
   But are these crypto billionaires like SBF and CZ just a flash in the pan? Or are they forerunners of an impending wave of wealth creation?
   Continue reading: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/05/24/how-web-3-changes-philanthropy/

• Amid other social and economic inequalities, access to the internet is still relatively universal.
• Reliance on brick-and-mortar services is reaching a point of diminishing returns.
• Web3 will make user owners of their data and other technological assets and present a great economic correction.

Roiled by a return of war in Europe, forgotten crises such as Afghanistan, two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and unchecked climate change, the world’s institutions, countries and companies, including those with fortress balance sheets, look decidedly enfeebled.
However, there is a silver lining among these dark clouds in the form of Web3. That is the third generation of the internet.
What is Web3 and why care?
Web3 is not only a new foundational layer of the world wide web, it is a fundamentally new approach to corporate governance, value creation and stakeholder participation with pari passu interests. It presents an opportunity where people are not merely products or beneficiaries of technology-powered business models but builders and owners of digitally unique assets.
The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, exposed pre-existing societal vulnerabilities while technology and universal access to the internet offered a semblance of continuity, which amounted to nothing short of a Great Correction. Like past global crises, whether anthropogenic or naturally occurring, post-pandemic recovery will require reformulating institutional and international norms.
Technology and how it is harnessed, especially with the emergence of an open internet of value, is the technological contest of our times. This reality is especially true and urgent since the provision of even basic services riding on brick and mortar or fixed lines has reached a point of diminishing returns.
Continue reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/what-is-web3-why-care-future/