Leashing NASA’S Ingenuity!
Recently NASA’s Ingenuity marked the last flight on Mars after the historical 2.5 years of flight. The first ever drone released in space showed impressive performance in data gathering and aerial surveillance.
Why the Ingenuity failed?
The Ingenuity was no longer able to fly after when one of its rotor blades got damaged during touchdown on its 72nd flight earlier this year on January 18 following which NASA had to abort this mission.
Now let’s imagine leashing Ingenuity to the Perseverance rover? Would the picture be different today ? Would we get more flight time on Mars?. Its now time to take a step ahead and think about deploying tethered drones in space. Do not worry, the tether won’t get stuck in building infrastructure, electric cables or trees, as there are no obstacles on Mars which is all the more reason to use tethered drones in space!
How can tethered drones be beneficial?
Tethering a drone to a rover in space will be advantageous in terms of,
·????? Unlimited flight time (continuous charge via tether)
·????? Faster and secure data transmission with the rover (via tether) and thus with planet Earth
·????? Better aerial surveillance
·????? No fear of loss of communication with the drone.
·????? No need of GPS or camera to control or fly the drone.
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With this technology, all the rover needs to do is move the tether to fly the drone like a kite. This actively manipulated tethered drone will thus follow the rover providing it bird’s eye of view surveillance. Our current patent “Tether controlled drone” (US 17/385,026) provides control solutions to handle such systems in space.
Currently we have implemented our control strategies on a Crazyflie nano drone tethered to the TurtleBot and our upcoming journal publication on this technology will be out soon. Stay tuned!
We are actively looking for sponsors to commercialize this concept and make this technology a reality. Please reach out to me if you are interested.
Scientist at ISRO
11 个月Found some concept similar to this for agriculture applications. Details can be found here https://youtu.be/IzaaSIEDg7s?si=BMG4y2O3dQyaOTud
Partner, Patent Attorney at Wood Herron & Evans LLP
11 个月The air is so thin on Mars, I was impressed a drone could fly at all. It would be like flying at an altitude of about 45,000 meters on Earth.