A Marsupial Robot Is What You Need in an Explosive Situation

(whirring)

[Narrator] For anyone other than

a pro drone racer like this, flying a quadcopter

indoors is a dangerous and silly thing to do.

And it's a definite no no if you want

to explore something sensitive like

a decommissioned energy or chemical plant.

(crashing)

Which is a shame, because a drone

is a powerful scouting tool.

But a machine like this may well be the solution.

It's known as a marsupial robot.

The track robot is the mother, and tethered to it

is a drone, the baby.

They have what a corporate PowerPoint presentation

might call, a synergistic relationship.

On account of being tethered, the drone,

called a Fotokite, can't fly off willy-nilly

and crash into something delicate.

That's particularly important when you

want to decommission things like

petrochemical plants, where pretty much

everything explodes.

Plus, the Fotokite can unspool to explore

those out-of-reach places.

All the while, it's running off the batteries

of the mother-robot, so it can stay airborne

far longer than your typical drone.

That, and the mother-robot can do the heavy lifting

of the processing.

For instance, it could carry a big,

cumbersome LiDAR unit to map the environment

with lasers, leaving the drone free to do

the more nimble scouting.

And so, mother and baby may one day

work together to tackle even the most

dangerous of indoor environments,

always tethered of course, you know,

because the fallibility of flying plastic.