The US military wants to create laser-powered bat drones that can make their own decisions in war
The Pentagon is giving out funding for animal-like drones that can be charged up by lasers.
The American government’s defence department is offering funding to companies that can create a new generation of autonomous bat-like drones powered by lasers.
They are particularly interested in “biomimetic” technology, which is a design mimicking real-life biological systems or functions.
The department’s Defence Enterprise Science Initiative is offering grants between $1.5 million and $6 million for companies who can make them nature-inspired unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The army also wants vehicles with the capability to work without interference from a human pilot on the ground, achieved by “self-contained algorithms” and hardware.
Ideally, these drones would have the ability to make real-time decisions and even plan their own missions.
To avoid landing trips to recharge, the US military are looking for wireless power transmission using lasers, or other types of electromagnetic radiation, like microwaves.
In their announcement, they suggest this power could be beamed out “either from the ground or from a high-altitude platform”, meaning other planes could transmit power to the drones from overhead.
The idea of bat-like drones isn’t new – last year engineers at Caltech trialled a flying robot with shape-changing wings – but the US government wants a far more sophisticated animal-inspired drone specialised for warfare.