UAV Hoisted Tower Powered By Laser Over Fiberoptic 103
carstene writes "LaserMotive, winners of the 2009 NASA power beaming contest, has a new invention, a virtual comm or surveillance tower. It's a quadcotper that can run indefinitely, powered by laser beam over a fiber optic cable. This allows the "tower" to reach great heights and avoids most laser safety issues."
Don't forget the data (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the advantages of this design over a lightweight copper power feed is that DATA is bidirectional over the same optic cable. Transmitting the surveillance data back to the ground is much more secure and at higher rates than through thin copper or over some RF transmitter on the copter. That is, this can be stealthier.