The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Robust Robotics Group has developed a plane that can navigate itself without GPS. For decades, researchers have been working on creating helicopters that can pilot themselves without human guidance.

On a dare, Texas college researchers hacked into and hijacked a drone of the US Homeland Security before the eyes of the offi cials operating it. Using a technique called ‘spoofi ng’ where a signal from hackers imitates the one sent to the drone’s on-board GPS, the researchers managed to take control of a small but powerful drone in mid-air. And the hijacking was just for a $1,000 wager.

VisionMap Ltd has announced that its A3 digital aerial camera imagery is now supported by Intergraph’s LPS photogrammetry software. This new compatibility provides LPS users the ability to perform stereo compilation with A3 imagery for mapping applications.

China successfully launched the remotesensing satellite Yaogan XIIII recently from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the northern province of Shanxi. The satellite was carried into space aboard a Long March 4B carrier rocket which blasted off at 3:06 p.m. Beijing time, according to the center.

Roads are improved and maintained depending on its roles such as transport routes, minelayers of lifelines, refugee roads at disaster and also needs of users. To improve the roads safety and convenience, road authorities need the data to be used to comprehend 3D shape of the road space and its deformation quickly and accurately.

WAAS provides very precise navigation service, with both horizontal and vertical guidance over the Continental United States (CONUS) and a large portion of Alaska, Canada, and Mexico. Other countries and regions of the world also have fielded or are fielding similar systems. WAAS and each of these other systems are known as a Satellite Based Augmentation System, or SBAS. As envisioned at its inception, WAAS today provides service from enroute through approach.

Established in 1994, the Hungarian Association for Geo-information HUNAGI is a non-for-profit, non-governmental umbrella organisation with the mission goal to encourage and facilitate the availability, accessiblity, share and useability of geographic information according to the EU INSPIRE directive. To achieve the goals HUNAGI provides forums for industry stakeholders and relevant governmental entities and other learned societies to build partnership which can benefit fom use of geosptial data and related technologies.

It was all about land. At the World Bank’s Land and Poverty conference (April 23- 26, 2012 Washington DC).
Where Access, ownership, reforms and rights. Acquisitions, regulations and legalities. Revenue, corruption,
administration and governance. People, poverty, policies and practices.

The UN Cartographic Section (UNCS) is planning to develop global multi-scale geospatial datasets (or UNmap) for rapid map production and web mapping in support to the Security Council and the Secretariat including UN field missions. Currently, an interim version of UNmap in scales of 1:1 million, 1:5 million and 1:10 million are in the final stages of completion. These maps are being used as primary geo-databases for UNCS and UN field missions.

The Pirate Bay (TPB), a bittorrent website, announced to take its networks off the earth’s surface. It is considering launching a series of ‘GPS-controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi’ to float the Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS). Through this way, it aims to keep the website safe from law enforcement of