Skydio R1 consumer drone in the sky

AUTONOMOUS SKYDIO R1 DRONE – THE NEXT LEVEL

Skydio was founded by Adam Bry, Abe Bachrach, and Matt Donahoe, who met as grad students at MIT where they worked on a high-speed autonomous flight project before they started Project Wing at Google. They then moved on to found Skydio to create a fully autonomously flying drone, which is a big step up from obstacle avoidance, and it seems that they have succeeded.

Now, of course, most of us know obstacle-avoidance from DJI’s drones. Even though that system is quite good and has helped save many drones from hitting walls, trees, and whatnot, it is not quite autonomous flight.

DJI raised the bar recently with the introduction of FlightAutonomy 2.0 on the DJI Mavic Air. FlightAutonomy 2.0 uses the primary gimbal camera together with the forward, backward, and downward dual-vision sensors and downward infrared sensing system to create a 3D map of the drone’s surroundings. DJI calls this technology Advanced Pilot Assistance Systems (APAS). And to be honest, when we saw it in action on the Mavic Air during the DJI event we were impressed. When it was my turn to fly, the drone ‘sensed’ the obstacles and flew around and over them, while I kept flying forward in a straight line. Impressive for sure, but this is semi-autonomous flying at best.

SPECIFICATIONS

The Skydio R1 drone comes equipped with a 4K, 30fps gimbal stabilized camera (in addition to the 12 cameras used for autonomous flying) and can be flown straight from your smartphone. As an autonomously flying drone, there really is no need for a separate controller.

The R1 is made with aerospace materials, including lightweight aluminum and carbon fiber and it can be launched from any flat surface or from your hand. It has several different flying modes available: follow, lead, side, orbit and tripod. You can select these features on your phone. You can also tap to follow, adjust the angle of the shot or take full control and fly the drone yourself while keeping the obstacle avoidance activated.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

Today, the Redwood City, California-based company Skydio R1 launches the Frontier Edition of the R1 drone. You can order it online starting today and it will ship in the next few weeks. The drone comes with two batteries that provide 16 minutes of flight time each. It also has 64GB of internal storage for video footage. The price of the R1 drone is $2499.

Apple has released iOS 11.3 beta 5

 iOS 11.3 beta 5 to developers, bringing a handful of bug fixes and features changes, but more importantly drawing us one step closer to the final release. The download is available as an over-the-air update to any device already on the developer channel, so if that means you, go hit up the Settings app right now.

iOS 11.3 is expected to bring new battery health features, along with new Animoji and ARKit improvements and the usual stability and security updates.


The iOS 11.3 betas have proven to be a goldmine so far. The first beta brought us a bunch of new features, including new Animoji, a version of ARKit, and some battery health data. iOS 11.3 beta 2 brought us new battery health features, including a toggle that lets users with older batteries disable the “performance enhancements” that got Apple in so much trouble. We’re still combing through the release notes to see if there are new features this week, or whether we’re just getting the dreaded stability improvements and bugfixes.

We’ve had a chance to play around extensively with the new features in iOS 11.3 betas already, so nothing in this new release should come as a surprise. The biggest change in iOS 11.3 is the introduction of several battery health features, which are supposed to make customers happy about Apple’s battery-related performance throttling.

The new features are contained within a new “Battery Health” menu, which is under the “Battery” tab on iOS 11.3. The page only really has two fields: Maximum Capacity, which shows what percentage of the original charge your battery can still hold; and Peak Performance Capacity, which tells you if your phone’s performance is being throttled due to the battery.

On older devices with a worse battery, the phone will show a reduced Maximum Capacity, as well as detail any performance slowdowns due to the decreased battery capacity. On devices that have weaker batteries, the Peak Performance Capability will change to read “This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again.” A small blue hyperlink then says “Disable,” which lets you manually turn off your iPhone’s performance management.

Aside from battery health, the biggest point of interest for most people has been the new Animoji. Although we’ve become used to new emoji landing with an iOS update, this is the first time that any new Animoji have been released. Apple is blessing us with the power to become a lion, a bear, a dragon, or a skull, which brings the total number of face-mimicking Animoji up to 16.

In addition, iOS 11.3 beta brings the newest version of Apple’s augmented reality kit, ARKit 1.5 In addition to horizontal surfaces, ARKit will now be able to recognize and place objects on verticals surfaces, like walls and doors. It can recognize the position of a sign or a poster, which Apple says can be utilized for interactive museum exhibits or bringing movie posters to life. Plus, the view from the camera now has a 50% greater resolution and auto-focus.

Community Day MAR 25, 2018 11:30 PM - 2:30 AM INDIA STANDARD TIME

Community Day

Bulbasaur shiny event

shiny pokemon

Get out and play together in your local community parks on Pokémon GO Community Day. For just a few hours each month, you can encounter a special Pokémon in the wild. During these hours, there's a chance to learn a previously unavailable move for that Pokémon or its evolution, as well as earn some Community Day bonuses. Celebrate what it means to be a part of the Pokémon GO community and make new friends along the way! 

Note: Fast TMs and Charged TMs will not grant exclusive moves during Community Day. To learn the exclusive move, you must catch or evolve the featured Pokémon during Community Day hours.

Apple ecosystem explain by Marques Brownle-youtuber

New Google Maps feature allows you navigate the world as moustachioed plumber Mario

How to get Mario Kart on Google Maps

To get started, users need to first update Maps app from Google Play or the App Store. Click on the yellow “?” icon found on the bottom right of Google Maps app on Android or iOS. Users would then see a prompt to enable Mario Time! Once enabled, users would notice that the regular navigation arrow has morphed into Mario.

How to clear ram in iphone x

Android P

Google has cracked the lid on the next version of Android so developers can peek inside and prepare their apps for all of the new features coming our way later this year. While it's not quite time to smash the update button on your phone for Android P, there are plenty of things worth getting excited about already.

Indoor Positioning

Google wants to make turn-by-turn directions while you are inside just as good as Maps has become when you are outside, and Android P is going to start making that happen with a little help from WiFi Round-Trip-Time (RTT). This feature in 802.11mc will make it possible for apps to know how far you are from the WiFi access point you are connected to, and developers will be able to use that information to give you a more accurate location indoors.

If that sounds like something you're probably not going to be able to use on your existing phone, there's a good chance you are right. This will likely be a feature you will benefit from in your next phone, rather than the one you have in your hand right now. Most likely a phone with the Pixel branding on it somewhere.

Notifications continue to improve

Google is making it possible for developers to move even more of the conversation from your messenger of choice into a notification. Image attachments and stickers are appearing in the notification now, replacing that dreaded "person has sent an attachment" message you get now. This dramatically improves at-a-glance messaging, but also means sometimes a single message in your notification drop-down can occupy a lot of physical real estate.

This new notification style will also give developers the option to add quick replies, similar to the system currently seen in Google Allo and the reply bot in Google's Reply app. It's not clear yet how much control developers will have over these replies, or if the system will simply tie into the Smart Reply system Google is currently using elsewhere, but either way more robust notifications are on the horizon.

Tripling down on privacy

There are a lot of security and privacy things happening in the background for Android P. The biggest by far is a new restriction system for sensors, cameras, and microphones when an app is marked as idle. All of these systems will stop reporting to the app as soon as it is idle, and any apps looking information from those sources will get nothing in return. Google is going so far as to recommend removing any language requesting background access, because those features will no longer function.

Google is also enabling encryption for backups with a client-side secret and per-network randomization of MAC addresses, but these features won't be fully available until later versions of the Android P preview.

Finally, individual apps are going to have better access to the fingerprint system in Android P, including a better UI across apps so users know that fingerprint authentication comes from the same trusted source.

Multi-Camera support

Several Android phones have multiple cameras on the front or back these days, but very few of them are able to work simultaneously. Google is adding an API for developers to explore a world where multiple cameras being used at the same time is possible.

This could mean anything, from depth-sensing magic using multiple cameras to an Apple-style live Portrait Mode or even commercial phones using a standard camera and a thermal camera at the same time to overlay the two images.

Additionally, Google is adding support for apps to use image stabilization and display-based flash just like the primary camera app on your phone. Bottom line is third-party cameras are going to keep getting better.

Support for Dat Notch

As manufacturers shrink bezels and the front-facing sensors leave a notch on your display, Android P will make it easier to support the cutout in the display with APIs to help create UI around that notch. This means full-screen apps with buttons on the sides will be able to actively avoid those notch areas in the display, which is great for everyone.

To help developers in these early stages, several different notch styles have been added to the the Android P simulator so you can test these things without having a phone on hand with a notch on the front.

This is not ready for you to use yet

This point doesn't come from Google, but can't be stressed enough every time a new version of Android is released to developers. This is an unstable, unfinished version of Android with features that might not even make it to the final release of Android P.

Unless you are working on an app, you probably don't want to install this first version of Android P on your phone. If you do install it on a phone, you probably don't want it to be a phone you rely on for anything important.