This Week in the Unmanned Systems and Robotics World

Yandex and Uber have announced that they are spinning out their self-driving joint venture into a standalone company. Yandex is also increasing its stake by investing an additional $150 million. (VentureBeat)

Ford and Argo AI recently took some time to educate elementary and middle school students attending the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy in Washington D.C. about self-driving vehicles. During a webcast, the scholar athletes learned how the technology must mimic the human body, and how engineers have to teach the self-driving car to think and behave like a human driver. (Ford Motor Company)

A drone is being used at the Bitterroot National Forest for the first time to map and provide live surveillance of the Cinnabar Fire in the Welcome Creek Wilderness northeast of Stevensville, Montana. The hybrid fixed-wing/Quadrotor is capable of flying up to 12 hours with a payload of about 20 pounds and almost 24 hours without a load. (Bitterroot Star)

Engineers from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab have built a three-inch drone that could be launched from a barrel. The drone is known as the Streamlined Quick Unfolding Investigation Drone (SQUID), and a larger, six-inch version of the drone debuted this year. (DroneDJ)

This week, Pittsburgh-based robotics technology firm Carnegie Robotics LLC announced the launch of Thoro (thoro.ai), which is a spin-off focusing on the commercialization of its Autonomous Mobile Robotics (AMR) technology for the cleaning and disinfection equipment industry. Carnegie Robotics says that Thoro is the result of extensive development by the company of state-of-the-art perception and intelligent navigation technology that safely navigates machines around people in public spaces to perform useful work. (PRNewswire)

In Hilton, New York, the Hilton Fire Department has begun training on how to use drone technology. The goal is to use the drones for a variety of missions such as life-saving search and rescue missions. (WHEC-TV)

After being granted an automated vehicle (AV) permit recommendation by TÜV SÜD to conduct live trials in Germany, Oxbotica says that it has mastered driving on the right-hand side of the road on public roads. The official trials started on public roads near Friedrichshafen in August, with a fleet of vehicles successfully navigating a complex urban environment. (New Mobility)