Australia is droned. Not only is the remote continent home to the UAV Outback Challenge; it's also no stranger to American drone bases creeping onto some of its perimeter islands. But this officially takes the cake for drones down under: A team of researchers are setting Highway to Hell, the title track off AC/DC's 1979 long-player, on a laser-guided collision with an unmanned drone.Not like Yoann Thueux and his colleagues at EADS Innovation Works in Newport, UK, need to actually justify doing this, or anything--AC/DC being bloated, unspectacular cock-rock notwithstanding. But it's as a matter of figuring out ways to shave off excess weight on a drone, thus allowing it to fly longer spy missions without having to land every so often to refuel, that the exercise could yield key insights, for better or worse.As New Scientist reports, Theux and team "eschew the heavy radio equipment and antennas used to beam acquired video back to base." The idea, rather, is to look at ways of simply tacking on a drone's data-video intake to a laser beam that's deflected off the aircraft's belly "by a tracking system up to 2 kilometers away." They're calling the laser-reflector development Project Dazzle.New Scientist explains:After the laser beam enters the reflector, it passes through a transparent switch, called a light modulator, that adds the digital zeroes and ones of the video data to the beam. The light then hits a mirror and is reflected back to the spot it came from - carrying the video data. The tech will allow a speed boost to 1 gigabit per second - easily allowing faster delivery of HD video, which struggles to top 20 megabits per second with radio frequencies.OK, OK. But AC/DC? Really? Why?"It was on my iPod and I thought it would be a good song to go first because I know it completely by heart," Thueux explained. "I'd be the first to tell if the technology was not working properly on playback."Technology, it's worth mentioning, that could be part of a full-fledged laser-drone revolution, if it ever comes.
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