As useful as
drones are up in the air, the process of getting them there tends to be annoying at best and dangerous at worst. Consider what it takes to launch something as simple as a
DJI Mavic or a
Parrot Anafi— you need to find a flat spot free of debris or obstructions, unfold the thing and let it boot up and calibrate and whatnot, stand somewhere safe(ish), and then get it airborne and high enough quick enough to avoid hitting any people or things that you care about.
I’m obviously being a little bit dramatic here, but ground launching drones is certainly both time consuming and risky, and there are occasions where getting a drone into the air as quickly and as safely as possible is a priority.
At IROS in Macau earlier this month, researchers from
Caltech and
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) presented a prototype for a ballistically launched drone—a football-shaped foldable quadrotor that gets fired out of a cannon, unfolds itself, and then flies off.