If you find anything to do with autonomous drones scary, look away now. Not content with being able to do everything a human pilot can do — at a fraction of the cost and danger — it’s now possible for drones to land autonomously on top of moving cars.
Admittedly, the car does need a giant net on the roof but there are other potentially big pay-offs. According to the researchers at the German Aerospace Center who pulled the stunt off, a moving landing on top of a car means that you can ditch a drone’s landing gear and wheels.
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That in turn lightens the drone’s payload and means that you can get a much longer range out of it. That’s especially important when the drone you’re flying is solar-powered, as the one tested by the German researchers was.
Perhaps the most interesting thing is the fact that the drone uses a QR code on the car’s roof to lock down the landing.
Check out the video below:
