Skip to main content

Watch this guy use a drone to rescue a drone, then drop it from a great height

Amazing drone rescue AND crash!!! Watch and see what happens at the end!!!
So your buddy accidentally crashes his quadcopter onto the roof of a tall building. He could probably go and ask the building owner for permission to grab it, but the thought of a rescue attempt using your own bird is a wee bit more exciting.

This is the situation recently faced by a couple of drone enthusiasts in Detroit. YouTuber “Random Axe” filmed the daring rescue effort, though it didn’t quite go according to plan.

With cops and security personnel looking on, Random Axe begins his mission by flying his copter over the building to check whether his friend’s crashed Phantom 3 machine is in a position from which it can realistically be rescued.

Having spotted it stranded in a retrievable location, he sets about attaching a rope and homemade grappling hook to his machine before sending it back to the accident scene.

After several attempts to grab the stranded Phantom 3, he eventually manages to hook it up off the ground. But it’s not quite mission accomplished.

As the two drones gain some altitude to move clear of the building, the winds really pick up and the situation starts to look a little tricky. And then, as the drones begin to descend together, the Phantom 3 hits the side of the building.

What happens next will not have pleased the the Phantom 3’s owner one bit. Why? Because the drone detaches from the hook, an unfortunate occurrence that sends it crashing to the ground … again.

Despite the heavy fall, the damage to the drone “wasn’t that bad,” according to the video maker. Even better, no one on the ground had the Phantom 3 land on their head.

Anyway, it seems like a happy ending was in store for the drone owner. According to his account, he took it back to the store, explained what’d happened and was offered a brand new replacement.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen a drone come to the rescue of another that’s crash-landed on a roof. Watch how this dude uses a Phantom 3 to rescue a Syma X5C drone that came a cropper a while earlier.

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
DARPA tests drones that can be dropped from planes and collected in midair
DARPA Gremlin drone 1

Gremlins X-61A Maiden Test Flight

Whether it’s drones that can be “grown” using chemistry in large-scale labs or dissolving drones designed to fly over enemy lines, there’s no shortage of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) innovation in military research. An ongoing project involving the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) adds one more item to the list. DARPA has been testing a new drone that can be launched from a plane, then later recovered in midair once it’s completed a mission. This is done by having the drone return to the plane and winched back on board via a special line, similar to a midair refueling.

Read more
Watch this foldable drone get fired out of a cannon before flying away
SQUID-caltech-nasa-jet-propulsion

Design of a Ballistically-Launched Foldable Multirotor

Firing a drone out of a cannon isn’t just a really cool way to put it into flight. There are some sound reasons for the design, which means it could become a real-world product at some point in the future.

Read more
Tiny drone uses A.I. to learn from nature’s best pilot, the hummingbird
hummingbird ai drone 200543 web 1

Hummingbird Robots: Naturally Intriguing

One of nature's most remarkable creations is the hummingbird, which flaps its wings up to 80 times per second and which can hover in place and fly in any direction. Now scientists have used machine learning algorithms to study the way these birds fly in order to replicate their abilities in drones.

Read more