IEEE Spectrum June 18, 2019
Researchers in China have developed an eight-rotor octocopter drone whose 35-kilogram weight at takeoff, includes its onboard quantum communication system. The quantum drone can operate while hovering in midair for 40 minutes at a time. It can maintain two air-to-ground links, each roughly 100 meters long, and can receive and transmit entangled photons during the daytime, on a clear night, and even on a rainy night. According to some scientists a communications network featuring quantum drones could be stymied by a number of challenges such as photons scattering, absorbed, or otherwise lost on their way to and from the drone, systems on the flying robot may potentially mistake stray photons from the sun as some of these lost entangled photons and turbulence is a significant source of signal degradation. These problems could considerably degrade the performance of quantum communication...read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Credit: Illustration: Erica Snyder; Drone: Shutterstock