Contra this assertion, drones are already frequently used around power lines, and as such, "finding hanging wires with a drone" is actually a very active field

Contra this assertion, drones are already frequently used around power lines, and as such, "finding hanging wires with a drone" is actually a very active field with fairly robust solutions. Not only are drones used for power line inspections (which are actually a somewhat easier variant of this problem, because the drone usually flies above or adjacent to the power lines in this scenario), but also for infrastructure inspections in direct adjacency to power lines. Power line detect-and-avoid is a headlining feature in one of DJI's newer enterprise platforms, the M400 (where it's based on LIDAR + mmWave Radar fusion). https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HFzRTRcjiqg https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HFzRTRcjiqg Also of note, this isn't the first double-failure issue for the MK30 - they had an issue last year at their test facility where their LIDAR malfunctioned in the same way on two drones in the same weather condition (misting), the drones believed they were at 0.0AGL and powered down in flight. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-16/amazon-removed-backup-landing-sensor-before-drone-crashes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-16/amazon-re...