Professional Grade Drones Will Give Hollywood's Television and Film Studios a Lift in Their Profits

      Raglan - Six figure price tag drones will help meet demand for motion picture and television studio's need for aerial camera platforms.  However, if drones can be used satisfactorily in television and film production, they can drastically reduce costs. 
     According to Los Angeles -based drone production firm Aerial MOB, helicopter rentals can go as high as $30,000 a day, while daily drone rental rates for motion picture making are as low as $10,000 to $15,000 per day to the production studio.  Until now, cinematographers have bolted specialized add-ons, like cinema-quality cameras, to off-the-shelf drones that cost a few thousand dollars each.  Two New Zealand drone manufacturers, Aeronavics and Shotover Camera Systems, want to change that.  Until recently, drone use in feature films and television was limited to productions shot outside the United States, but late last year Washington began granting exemptions to commercial drone users on a case-by-case basis.  Of nearly 700 exemptions issued by the Federal Aviation Administration at the start of July 2015, approximately half of them were for aerial photography (including transmitting live television).  Unmanned aerial vehicles have been used in films that include:  "Dr. Who", "Twilight", "007 Skyfall", "Furious 7", "Jurassic World", and other hits.  "A lot of people have been shooting with drones in the past few years but not really in the very high-end space, so that's where our business will operate, "says Shotover Camera Systems'  general manager Brad Hurndell.  See also, www.popularmechanics.com.                  

New Drone Legislation Would Give Six Months in County Jail and/or Thousands of Dollars in Fines

      Sacramento - Senate Bill 168 looks likely to become law.  SB 168 will protect emergency responders from any liability for the destruction an an unauthorized drone during firefighting or medical support operations.  Private UAVs have disrupted firefighting operations several times this year, including during a wildfire last month on Interstate 15 in San Bernardino, California.  See full story...http://www.kfi640.com. 

British Academy of Film and Television Arts Presented The 11th Annual B.A.F.T.A. Video Game Awards

           London - The 11th British Academy Video Game Awards ceremony, was presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), in March of 2015.  It was as good as it gets including 25 exciting categories, a red carpet entry with nominee interviews, an opening performance by Riva Taylor, and more.  The awards show honored such  computer and video game categories as:  best video game, best video game designer, best video game animator, greatest video game breakthrough technology, best video game music, and more categories.  BAFTA took place in March of 2015, at the Tobacco Dock, in London, England.   See full story, www.bafta.org.   

Drones Cost Crucial Hours of Fire-Fighting Time in California

      Newhall - Fire-fighter injuries and delays in fire-retardant-dropping air-bombers increase when model aircraft, drones, fly within or near restricted airspace that is intended for wild-fire fighting, according to the National Inter-agency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.  See whole story,  www.dailymail.co.uk.   
 

400 ft. 4,000 ft. 11,000 ft...One of Those is Right

       Newhall - A drone flying at approximately 11,000 feet required the loss of two hours of fire-fighting time, after the drone interfered with fire-fighting operations in Newhall, California.  The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) classifies drones as model aircraft, and-as-such, limits their flight altitude to 400 feet maximum.  See whole story, www.ktla.com.   

MOST SOUGHT AFTER SPORTS CAR

       Carmel - The 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, known by connoisseurs as, 'chassis number 3851 GT', that sold in California in August 2014, set a new high for a classic car at $38 million.  The Ferrari 250 GTO beat the previous sale record of approximately $30 million, for a Mercedes W196.  The Ferrari 250 GTO is among the world's most rare and sought-after cars.  Only 39 Ferrari 250 GTOs were built.  See whole story, www.latimes.com.       

Robotic Soccer

        Pittsburgh - According to the Economist robots are coming on stronger.  Half a century is roughly the time that separates ENIAC, America's first electronic computer, from Deep Blue, the IBM machine that beat chess playing grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997.  Now, robots are beginning to do to European football (soccer) what IBM's Deep Blue did to the board game of chess. 
     RoboCup is a competition for robot soccer players, rather than flesh-and-blood ones.  This year RoboCup kicked off on July 19, 2014 in Joao Pessoa, Brazil.  A question that is on many minds is: when will real machines conquer the sport.  Robots do not require a salary and may reduce the annual costs of running a soccer team.  When the first RoboCup was held in 1997, those who launched it set a target of 2050 as the decade engineers would produce a humanoid robot that will rival the champions of that future teams era.  The plodding clumsiness of the RoboCup players is quickly improving.  For instance, self-driving cars and delivery drones, which seemed hopelessly futuristic a decade ago, are now products that businesses may purchase for use now, in 2014.  This years RoboCup had 150 teams.  However, the tournament includes features the organizers hope will accelerate innovation, without the incentive of cash.  For instance, the teams run on very low yearly budgets that are regulated by league rules.  The second rules is a clever combination of competition and co-operation.  Leading up to the playoffs, teams prepare new strategies and fine-tune their hardware and software secrets.  And, immediately after the finals have been played the teams must publish the methods they employed during the competition.  That fills in the gap for something another team might be weak at, and thus the level of learning how to make the robots play, is raised for the entire sport of robotic-soccer.  Thirdly, there are limits to how far teams can push their hardware.  This encourages machinists and engineers to develop smarter ways to win, rather than by using mere brute force.  Fourthly, RoboCup is comprised of several leagues.  These RoboCup leagues range from a little league of miniature cylinders on wheels, like the "Star Wars" character R2-D2, and in which league, the entire team is controlled by one computer using input from overhead cameras to a fully-limbed humanoid league, like R2-D2's companion C-3PO.  In the humanoid league, which is further divided into three sizes of robot - kid, teen, and adult - each android has its own independent on-board sensors and artificial intelligence software.  Also with software, for those robo-jocks who are better at software than hardware, their is a virtual league.  Competition in the virtual league focuses on improving the software needed to program the robots. That software will be used for the fast play style of robotic soccer.  The software will eventually be combined with the hardware - machinery of the robot - to make the robot.  While robots in the humanoid league are still lumbering and prone to error, the speed-and-accuracy of the smaller robots is stunning.  In the little league the robots mechanical accuracy is better, perhaps because they require less power.  Little league robots can kick a ball at speeds of up to 24 feet per second.  They could easily shoot harder were it not for hardware-control regulations that set a maximum speed.  Manuela Veloso helped found RoboCup and her group has won the most final's titles in the little league.  In 2009 Dr. Veloso and her colleagues decided to share with their competitors, the software that had led their team to a win-streak of RoboCups.  See also, www.popularmechanics.com.