Drones have been in the limelight recently, where at least one of the stories do not actually bring any kind of comfort to us ordinary folk. After all, who would want a drone to actually crash into you while you are outdoors? Those things aren’t exactly the lightest devices around, and from a great height at a certain velocity, it might even maim or kill rather than give you a nasty shock. For all you know, it could be a staged assassination attempt that has been disguised as an “accident”. Enough daydreaming for now – back to the topic at hand, a drone which can fly around indefinitely without ever returning to base simply because it can recharge itself by landing on a power line.
Yup, researchers have worked on ‘bird’ drones which actually land on power lines so that they can recharge themselves, and a working prototype has already been developed as you read this. Such drones could come in handy by the military in a long-running surveillance campaign, where the drone would rely on the magnetic field in order to land in the perfect spot. Apart from that, the Air Force, too, is working on something similar which might even hunt in swarms. Now that’s a scary thought, don’t you think so? The birds aren’t gonna be too happy to share their power lines with robots though, but what other options have they?
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