{"id":27673,"date":"2020-01-10T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/mysterious-drone-activity-suggests-swarming-technology-is-being-tested-over-eastern-plains\/"},"modified":"2020-01-10T08:00:32","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T13:00:32","slug":"mysterious-drone-activity-suggests-swarming-technology-is-being-tested-over-eastern-plains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/?p=27673","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious drone activity suggests \u2018swarming technology\u2019 is being tested over eastern Plains"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Data\"Data \t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tPlease enable Javascript to watch this video \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t <\/p>\n

DENVER — Colorado's drone mystery<\/a> continues and descriptions of drone sightings on the eastern Plains are offering a few clues about what may be occurring.<\/p>\n

Some have described the drones as having rotors. Others say they resemble small planes. Both may be correct. There are multi-rotor drones and fixed-wing drones.<\/p>\n

"An aircraft like this (fixed wing) can fly for three to four hours with the same battery. A multi-rotor can only for about 30 minutes," explained Eric Frew, a professor in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado Boulder.<\/p>\n

CU Boulder is at the cutting edge of research into drone swarming technology, which is what we may be seeing out on the eastern Plains.<\/p>\n

"It sounds like they're using similar types of software and similar types of algorithms," Frew said.<\/p>\n

Swarming is the ability to fly several dozen drones with just one pilot, and CU Boulder was one of the first entities in the country to receive a waiver from the FAA to do it legally.<\/p>\n

"Having one pilot command three drones is no less safe than one pilot commanding one," said Frew.<\/p>\n

Students at the University of Colorado Boulder<\/a> are testing drone swarming technology to improve search and rescues. Swarms of drones could help teams more quickly find lost hikers or someone buried in an avalanche.<\/p>\n

The university has also looked at how drone swarms could be used to track wildlife.<\/p>\n

Swarming could explain why folks on the eastern Plains are seeing so many drones, but there is no large gathering of pilots.<\/p>\n

"The thing I find most surprising is the night-time flying. Why at night? I think it implies they don't want to be seen. I think it's just because they don't have permission to fly 20 at once and they want to try it out," said Frew.<\/p>\n

However, the mystery of who is doing it and why they are flying swarms of drones at night remains a mystery.<\/p>\n

"I'm hoping we as a community will help solve this problem and citizens will see we care about answering these questions too. The people flying these drones are giving us a bad name," said Frew.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tAlertMe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please enable Javascript to watch this video
\nDENVER — Colorado's drone mystery continues and descriptions of drone sightings on the eastern Plains are offering a few clues about what may be occurring.<\/p>\n

Some have described the drones as having rotors. Others say they resemble small planes. Both may be correct. There are multi-rotor drones and fixed-wing drones.<\/p>\n

“An aircraft like this (fixed wing) can fly for three to four hours with the same battery. A multi-rotor can only for about 30 minutes,” explained Eric Frew, a professor in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado Boulder.<\/p>\n

CU Boulder is at the cutting edge of research into drone swarming technology, which is what we may be seeing out on the eastern Plains.<\/p>\n

“It sounds like they're using similar types of software and similar types of algorithms,” Frew said.<\/p>\n

Swarming is the ability to fly several dozen drones with just one pilot, and CU Boulder was one of the first ent..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}