So what exactly does the term “drone” usually refer to? The drone is referred to as an unpiloted aircraft. Sometimes also called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), these crafts can carry out an impressive range of tasks, ranging from military operations to package delivery. Drones can be as large as an aircraft or as small as the palm of your hand. So they can equally be beneficial to carry out tasks in secret too.
Like just imagine that there are people stuck in a building that caught fire as you can hear their screams but you cannot locate their actual position but with the help of a drone you can easily find it out and rescue them before it gets too late. It can also end up dropping your medicines which you ordered online without the need of you stepping outside of your home. Although it was originally developed for the military and aerospace industries, the drones found their way into the mainstream because of the enhanced levels of safety and efficiency they bring along with themselves.
These robotic UAVs operate without a pilot on board and with different levels of autonomy. A drone’s autonomy level can range from remotely piloted where a human will control the drone using its movements to even advanced autonomy, in which the drone will rely on a system of sensors and detectors to calculate its movement.
But there was an issue with the flight timing of the drones as the battery life used to drain out real quick so if you are on a secret mission and you see that the drone is about to stop functioning it has to be returned back to base and recharged so wouldn’t be so effective as the mission has to be left incomplete and can cause a lot of problems. That was until now.
Patrick Maletz, the director of Cornwall’s Falco Drone Technologies, says that he has found a way to increase the flight times for the drones. His idea is to design such drones which will use the wind currents to stay afloat in the air instead of overcoming them just like birds. This as a result will overcome a lot of issues all at once for instance by using the wind currents to stay afloat it will save its battery life and not use it up a lot to fight the wind currents so this will actually extend the flight time and the spared batteries will be used for longer missions, farther destinations, or even more intricate tasks. As Patrick says “We’ve worked out that by using wind like a bird does, rather than fighting against it, we can increase flight time to about three hours in optimal conditions,”. Now, this is definitely an amazing breakthrough and will definitely be very beneficial and a huge success for Falco Drone Technologies.
Patrick then goes on about the briefing for the technology which he chose to use for his drones. He said that ‘Our technology allows for drastically improved flight performance of multirotor drones by mimicking bird flight,” he goes on to explain by saying that ‘The technology allows drones to efficiently harness local wind energy to supplement lift whilst being able to fly long distances with the efficiencies of a plane, perfectly blending the benefits of fixed-wing and multirotor aircraft.’ It is predicted that Patrick will be ready for its first-ever full operational ‘Hover drone’ by the end of the year which will then be available for the clients to consider and buy.
