Got Garbage? Get a Fire-Breathing Drone

There could be no need for dumps or days dedicated to street cleaning in the future thanks to a utility company located in the Chinese city of Xiangyang. Their newest and perhaps most useful creation is a remote controlled fire-breathing drone that incinerates waste with just a few powerful blasts.

It was the constant garbage pileup on local power lines that prompted the development of this unconventional product. Currently, a cherry picker equipped with several technicians travels to the pileup points and manually cleans the lines. It’s a fine fix for the time being, but it’s too dangerous and time-consuming to continue indefinitely.

By bringing fire-breathing drones into the picture, the job becomes effortless, and technicians can focus on more important tasks. The clean-up team is swapped out with one drone managed by a pair of workers, who control the drone to set the garbage aflame from the safety of the ground below.

A project as specific as this one will need time before it’s perfect and readily available. The firestarter drone isn’t, however, the first of its kind. Last year, the US formally tested flame-equipped drones approved by the FAA and NASA to spark fires that remained tame. Additionally, university researchers at the Homestead National Monument of America, located in Nebraska, experimented with a different drone that serves the same purpose. This drone releases flammable pellets that ignite upon impact, and it managed to spread fire across twenty-six acres of long grass.

Even more bizarre is the possibility of drone-cooking, which uses a firestarter drone to torch raw food into a hot meal. So far, only a turkey has been tested on. As long as they serve a good purpose, drones are sure to be part of our future.