Did you hear about the Facebook Drone Project? No…Well… Facebook
has moved several steps closer to fulfilling its grand ambition of building an
Internet network in the sky, announcing on Thursday that it has built its first
unmanned drone and found a way to vastly increase the capacity of the lasers
that will eventually beam data between the drone network and the ground.
A team in Britain has been working on building the
solar-powered drone, known as Aquila, for about 14 months. Now the company says
that the unmanned aerial vehicle, made of ultralight composite materials and
weighing 880 pounds, is ready for in-flight tests in the upper atmosphere, most
likely in the United States.
Facebook, whose primary business is operating the world’s
largest social network, has been working on a range of projects to extend
Internet access to the four billion or so people who don’t have it, including
teaming with phone carriers to offer free access to Facebook and other basic
services in developing countries through its Internet.org app.
The drones are part of a long-term project intended to
deliver the Internet to people who live far away from cell towers and fiber
optic lines. Although Facebook is designing the drones and the network as well
as solving technical problems, it says it will share its knowledge with
partners and hopes to enlist telecommunications companies, aircraft
manufacturers and perhaps governments in the actual construction and operation
of the system.
Google, Facebook’s rival for the attention of Internet
users, is pursuing its own plan, called Project Loon, to provide Internet
access through a network of drifting high-altitude balloons. Sri Lanka said
this week that it had signed a pact to eventually bring the Loon project to
that country, although Google said many details remained.
In Facebook’s vision, hundreds of drones will be lifted into
the sky by helium balloons and left to circle at altitudes of 60,000 to 90,000
feet — far above commercial airliners and weather systems. The network would be
supplemented by satellites orbiting even higher up.
However, there remains a significant amount of work to do on
the technology required to make the system a reality, including devising better
batteries that can keep each plane aloft for three months and building lasers
for data transmission that can track a moving receiver the size of a dime from
11 miles away.
Facebook is approaching its drone program almost as it would
a software “hackathon.” Teams working on issues like battery power and lasers
are exchanging ideas with other people working on artificial intelligence and
Facebook’s data centers.
Facebook also hopes to speed development by making available
much of its research and many of its discoveries without cost. The arrangement
is similar to an open-source software project, where anyone can draw on a core
of publicly available code but is obligated to share improvements with the
community. Facebook has already used this method in building computer servers.
Source: NY Times
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