This Week in the Unmanned Systems and Robotics World

A company called Upvision recently used a UAS to map a copper mine in Mongolia. The company says that “more than 10 km² of mine and surroundings” were mapped using the MaVinci Sirius UAS, which Upvision has used for more than five years for this type of mission.

Cape Town, South Africa-based UAV Industries has launched its accredited Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Training Course, which is open to all UAS pilots that possess a valid Remote Pilot Licence (RPL). The course, which is first to market in Africa, is endorsed by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SA CAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). (sUAS News)

Canada’s Ottawa Police Service recently demonstrated its new UAS. The UAS will be used for a variety of purposes, including helping with collision investigations, crime scene mapping, and searching for missing people. (CTV Ottawa News)

A driverless bus was recently demonstrated in Bismarck, North Dakota. As part of the North Dakota Department of Transportation’s inaugural Transportation Expo, the demonstration was meant to give residents their first taste of the “impending technology.” (The Bismarck Tribune)

Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and her colleagues at CSAIL have developed MapLite, which is a “framework that allows self-driving cars to drive on roads they’ve never been on before without 3-D maps.” Thanks to the combination of simple GPS data with a series of sensors that observe the road conditions, MapLite allowed the CSAIL team to autonomously drive on multiple unpaved country roads in Devens, Massachusetts, and reliably detect the road more than 100 feet in advance. (MIT News)

NASA has announced that a small, autonomous rotorcraft called Mars Helicopter will travel with its Mars 2020 rover mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in July 2020. Weighing less than four pounds, the helicopter includes built-in capabilities needed for operation at Mars, including solar cells to charge its lithium-ion batteries, and a heating mechanism to keep it warm through the cold Martian nights, according to NASA. (NASA)

In an effort to have driverless patrol vehicles on Dubai roads by 2020, Dubai Police General Command has signed a memorandum of understanding with a Dubai-based company called Acacus Technologies. Acacus Technologies develops autonomous vehicle technology and “state-of-the-art transportation management.” (Acacus Technologies)

Tencent Holdings has received its first license to conduct open-road tests of its autonomous cars on designated areas in Shenzhen, China. The license is the first such authorization issued by the Transport Committee and Public Security and Traffic Police Bureau of Shenzhen. (South China Morning Post)

From May 30 to 31, the University of Wyoming will host the Wyoming Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Symposium. Some of the topics that will be covered during the symposium include recent developments in UAS usage, technology challenges and legal issues surrounding the aircraft. (University of Wyoming)

The BMW Group has officially obtained the Shanghai Intelligent Connected Autonomous Driving Test License. The automaker is the first international automaker to obtain the Autonomous Driving road test license in China. (BMW Group)