Power Line Perching UAV Doubles Down on Drone Delivery

摘要

Last December Online marketplace Amazon.com unveiled a plan for a delivery system of drones that can deliver packages to people living within 10 miles of a distribution center. One of the reasons for that mileage limit is that the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) the company plans to use only have enough battery life to cover that distance without recharging. Researchers at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) think they've come up with a solution to this problem. Inspired by birds, researchers have developed a lightweight UAV that can land and perch on a power line, paving the way for the possibility that the aircraft could recharge its batteries using power lines' magnetic fields.