A novel use of ArduPilot, with Copter running on a BeagleBone Blue used to demonstrate some very precise flying.
Thanks to @camti for sending this through.
Text, imagery and video courtesy UoM press release. An octocopter capable of attaching asphalt shingles to roofs with a nail gun has been demonstrated at the University of Michigan.

This aerial vehicle is autonomous, meaning that it positions the nail gun on a nailing point, places the nail and moves to the next point without needing a human at the controls.

“For me, the biggest excitement of this work is in recognizing ... Read more

Congratulations to Andy Piper (aka Andyp1per on this forum and on github) for winning the Ardupilot contribution of the month prize for August 2019!

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OSD NAV info support added in Rover

Just added to Master, full NAV support for Rover in the OSD…

Also, improvements for the OSD display in slow vehicles, like displacement style Boats, to show more precision at low values…
see the Tugboat reference build for an example : http://ardupilot.org/rover/docs/reference-frames-vacutug.html

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American Security Drone Act of 2019

Interesting analysis of bipartisan bill introduced inton US Congress that would ban purchase of Chinese drones by US government:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-likelihood-the-American-Security-Drone-Act-of-2019-recently-introduced-by-the-US-Senate-will-be-approved-by-Congress-and-if-it-is-how-would-it-impact-the-UAV-industry/answer/Christopher-Korody?srid=5Ytf

The author rates is as having a good chance of passage and implementation. Most interestingly,

“Indirectly this bill would impact many other corners of the sUAS ecosystem because DJI is the de facto industry standard. A large portion of the sUAS software industry is reliant on their APIs and SDKs. This would slow their growth as well since it is predicated on selling licenses. Over time, this would encourage software development - there is a growing global Open Source community. And there are very few Part 107 pilots (RPICS) with experience on anything but Chinese ... Read more

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