Flying drone arranges rendezvous with ground bot, lands on it

DNP Robo copter lands on a moving platform video

Fictional super robots like Megazord, Voltron and Voltes V can assemble themselves, because their smaller components can coordinate with each other while docking. That's the idea behind this new study, which has successfully found a way for an unmanned aerial vehicle to autonomously land on a similarly unmanned ground vehicle. These two drones find each other by sending their locations to their partner and meeting at a pre-set landing point, according to the paper published by researchers John M. Daly, Yan Ma and Steven L. Waslander. The technology has tons of potential applications -- for instance, it could allow flying military drones to dock on land vehicles if they need gas or a recharge. In case the FAA decides to OK delivery drones in the future, trucks could carry several flying machines to a particular area so they can do their job and then rendezvous afterward for more deliveries. Unfortunately, a super robot's not likely to happen soon, but you can watch the drone-on-drone demo in the video after the break.

[Image credit: Mooshuu/Flickr]