The car-toting robocopter will carry the all-terrain vehicle in a belly sling, scope out the best place to land, and then set the self-driving, sensing car free to search the area for dangerous contaminants.
“All of this will occur out of direct sight, without human intervention and without putting human lives at risk,” explained a press release announcing the project, called Extended Operational Reach with Autonomous Air and Ground Vehicles.
The effort is a collaboration between robotics engineers at Carnegie Mellon University, Sikorsky, manufacturer of the Black Hawk helicopter, and US Army researchers.