Important Innovations

Unique Power System:  Inflight Battery Swaps for Drones Source:  UC Berkeley New Drone/Battery System UC Berkeley HiPeRLab Innovation Can you imagine a drone with almost unlimited flying time?  Well, it's just been created by engineers and roboticists at the University of California Berkeley's HiPeRLab, their High Performance Robotics Lab.  It's a prototype drone system with unique, inflight battery switching technology.  The potential is to keep drones in the air for almost unlimited flight times. Quadcopter Drone with a Docking Deck The team has invented a quadcopter drone with a docking tray that's able to accept a smaller, fresh battery delivering drone.  The battery drone lands on the dock, recharges the larger drone and flies away.  This allows the next battery drone to fly in and take its place to do a recharge. Sustainable Drone Flights This is a fascinating approach to one way of powering sustainable drone flights.  In the future, othe

Quadcopter Drones with Wheels MIT roboticists have created what may be the world's most versatile robots.  They can fly and drive.  They are also autonomous.  And, according to the scientists, they can find their own safe paths. No Collisions The MIT team took 8, 4-rotor quadcopter drones and equipped them with 2 small motors and wheels. They developed algorithms to make sure they don't collide.  In test simulations, they fly and drive perfectly. Combo Vehicles that Work The robots can fly for 295 feet and drive 826 feet until their batteries run out.  The scientists say the most important implication of their research is that vehicles which combine flying and driving have the potential to be more efficient and useful than vehicles that just fly or drive.  They believe their experiments are helping to explore and forward ideas for flying cars.