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Watch a drone land perfectly on the roof of a speeding car

drone lands on car
DLR/YouTube

A team of researchers at the German Aerospace Center has figured out how to land a drone on top of a car driving nearly 50 miles per hour.

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And there's a pretty cool video that shows them pulling it off.

Here's how they did it:

Researchers at Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, also called DLR, put "optical markers" on the landing platform on the roof of a car. They outfitted a 10-foot, 44-pound electric drone, is traveling the same speed as the car, with a tracking system that "recognizes the landing platform and performs a highly accurate calculation of its position relative to the ground vehicle," the researchers write.

Then, the drone uses an autopilot-like system to land.

There are quite a few practical reasons for developing the technology to land a drone on a moving target.

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According to the researchers at DLR, this allows unmanned vehicles to be made without landing gear. This not only reduces the weight of the craft to allow it to fly faster, at higher altitudes, and for longer periods, but also provides room for a bigger payload.

Such a landing system could be outfitted on ultralight solar-powered aircraft that are used with satellite systems as well as on drones that study climate change, assess the aftermath of natural disasters, or provide communications networks, the researchers write.

Even though you need a person to drive the car now, the researchers say that in the future, it could be used with autonomous vehicles. 

The team from DLR also writes that it "simplifies landings in adverse weather conditions including crosswinds or wind gusts."

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A few weeks ago, Ford and the drone maker DJI announced the DJI Developer Challenge, a $100,000 prize that will be awarded to someone who can build a system for a drone and Ford truck to communicate in real time, essentially allowing a drone to take off from a truck and then return to it even if the truck has moved. The idea is that it would allow UN first responders to deploy drones to do surveillance on areas hit by natural disasters.

The team from DLR seems like a good candidate for the prize.

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