One of the most annoying aspects most of the drones on the market is the battery life. Just as you get into the fun, you need to either recharge or swap out the battery. The PARC (Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications) drone can stay up indefinitely, which solves that problem.
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So, the PARC isn’t the kind of thing you buy to shoot a few pictures at the family barbecue. It’s a non-weaponised reconnaissance tool that maintains a permanent connection to the ground via a microfilament that extends to over 150m. That microfilament can carry data and power, is thinner than a headphone cable and unaffected by water or power lines.
By delivering power and data directly to the PARC, the developers from CyPhy Works are able to keep comms secure as they’re not going over the air. This can be an important consideration in many of the applications the drone is used. For example, it can be used to survey an area using its camera and identify when someone is planting an IED (improvised explosive device).
It also means the drone can stay in the air for as long as you can feed power to it. That can be using a battery pack, generator or other source.
Although the PARC has a camera, that can be removed and substituted with other sensors making it a very flexible tool. While there are some obvious military applications, the PARC can be used to carry out other operations in factories, warehouses, stadiums and other applications.
CyPhy Works PARC [CyPhy Works]
Disclaimer: Anthony Caruana travelled to Cisco Live in San Diego as a guest of Cisco.
Comments
2 responses to “PARC Drone Can Stay In The Air Indefinitely”
Hmm… I wonder if you could beam energy to a drone using a microwave source? You could do the same thing as this but without a cable.
what would the price of the PARC Drone run to the public?