Two new reports about drone development, which can aid in shipping goods–or things that aren’t so good.

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From “Autonomous Drones Flock Like Birds,” by Ed Young at Nature:

“A Hungarian team has created the first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock. The researchers watched as the ten autonomous robots took to the air in a field outside Budapest, zipping through the open sky, flying in formation or even following a leader, all without any central control.

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The aircraft, called quadcopters because they have four rotors, navigate using signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, communicate their positions to one another via radio and compute their own flight plans. They were created by a team of scientists led by Tamás Vicsek, a physicist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

‘This is remarkable work,’ says Iain Couzin, who studies collective animal behaviour at Princeton University in New Jersey. ‘It is the first outdoor demonstration of how biologically inspired rules can be used to create resilient yet dynamic flocks. [It suggests] we will be able to achieve large, coordinated robot flocks much sooner than many would have anticipated.'”

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From “Rolls-Royce Drone Ships Challenge $375 Billion Industry: Freight,” by Isaac Arnsdorf at Bloomberg:

“In an age of aerial drones and driver-less cars, Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is designing unmanned cargo ships.

Rolls-Royce’s Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel’s bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships.

Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the $375 billion shipping industry that carries 90 percent of world trade, Rolls-Royce says.”