4 ms·
> Of course the drone would need the capability to throttle up and climb fully laden, possibly even minus one rotor, and the energy reserves to spare. I've put
by dodobirdlord 7y ago
> Of course the drone would need the capability to throttle up and climb fully laden, possibly even minus one rotor, and the energy reserves to spare.
I've put some thought into this from time to time and I see a few alternatives. One is to use a tow line with some sort of auto-belay, and shield the rotors so that the line can't get snagged under usual circumstances. Then a drone can be reeled in if the need arises. Another option is to have drones able to adhere to each other (magnets? velcro? carabiners?) so that functional lightly-laden drones can perform an in-air rescue of a malfunctioning drone before it reaches the ground. This assumes that a malfunctioning drone would still have some mechanism to slow its descent, which isn't unreasonable.
- thombat 7y agoThe unimpeded path required for a tow line would restrict the number of drones an airship could operate, since it would presumably need to be nearly directly above them. This would also make it difficult to operate in cities with overhead cables.
- dodobirdlord 7y agoTrue, a tow line is a less than ideal solution. Perhaps a tow line could be rapidly deployed by a special purpose fast moving (catapult launched?) drone and affixed to a malfunctioning drone.