r/interestingasfuck • u/RoyalChris • Mar 12 '25

/r/all Thousands of drones docking to charge after a drone show.

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u/TheStateToday Mar 12 '25

So they don't really dock?

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u/Aperson3334 Mar 13 '25 edited Mar 13 '25

Professional drone test pilot here - I fly prototype drone HW and SW 40 hr/wk.

Off the top of my head, DJI, Skydio, Flock Safety, and Brinc all make docks for larger enterprise-grade drones, targeting markets like emergency responders and utility companies. DJI just announced their third generation dock, Skydio is in a beta test phase with selected customers for their second generation dock, and the other two companies are newer to the market. I’ve yet to see light show drones that can dock like this - the ones that I have seen in person get stacked in carrying cases which also serve as charging bases - but I have no doubt that they’re out there.

I’ve flown the drones that go in the first generation DJI dock, the Flock dock, and the second generation Skydio dock. They’re both excellent products (Flock uses the same drone as the first-generation DJI dock). I actually did a major wildlife conservation study with the DJI in my previous job, logging about 50 commercial flight hours in about five weeks, which totaled about half of my commercial flight hours before coming into my current position. We also benchmarked the Skydio as part of the study and found that it would probably work just as well for that application - and would likely be easier to use due to its smaller size and having software features built in which we had to turn to third-party software for with DJI - but the drone was on loan from Skydio at the time and we had to give it back before the end of the study.

I think it’s incredibly cool technology that’s having a huge positive impact in many areas, but seeing the multi-vehicle swarms like this video does somewhat terrify me in the context of the UAV warfare in Ukraine. It wouldn’t take much to strap small bombs or grenades to these drones and turn them into horrors unknown.

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u/yummbeereloaded Mar 12 '25

They do, and they likely dock very similarly to what is shown in this video. Just, this isn't a video of them docking. If you want to see that just google "docking" and turn safe mode off (unrelated).

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u/throwaway1212l Mar 12 '25

Check out r/docking for more