The emergence of tethered drones represents a major advancement in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offering solutions to key limitations faced by traditional drones. This article explores the potential of tethered drones with a particular focus on their ability to tackle issues related to battery life constraints and data latency commonly experienced by battery operated drones. Through their connection to a ground station via a tether, autonomous tethered drones provide continuous power supply and a secure direct data transmission link facilitating prolonged operational durations and real time data transfer. These attributes significantly enhance the effectiveness and dependability of drone missions in scenarios requiring extended surveillance, continuous monitoring and immediate data processing needs. Examining the advancements, operational benefits and potential future progressions associated with tethered drones, this article shows their increasing significance across various sectors and their pivotal role in pushing the boundaries of current UAV capabilities. The emergence of tethered drone technology not only addresses existing obstacles but also paves the way for new innovations within the UAV industry.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. When babies crawl on the floor, especially in carpeted areas, their movement kicks up lots of dirt and dust, including things like skin cells, bacteria, and fungal spores. Researchers at Purdue University wanted to find out if that could be bad for the babies.

Enterprise asset management software (EAM) has been around for more than 20 years. Over that time, it's evolved from simply providing tools for managing asset maintenance to being able to provide a way for organizations to track their assets -- anything from an HVAC system to a key piece of manufacturing equipment, to a stretch of railroad track -- and record their condition, get alerts about the need for preventative maintenance, extend the life cycle of those assets, and of course, manage work orders. Until now, improvements to EAM systems have largely been evolutionary, not revolutionary. We're already starting to see new technologies that are making EAM a clear differentiator for companies. Ultimately, the future of EAM will be about information exchange between devices/components and people.

Drones are becoming more common in our skies, performing a variety of tasks, from taking photos to monitoring crops and potentially even delivering broadband. But there are strict rules about their usage, which has led some to come up with innovative ways to fly such vehicles more safely. "I'm using a dog leash for a small dog," says roboticist Sergei Lupashin as he demonstrates a new kind of consumer-friendly drone at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver. By tethering it, he hopes the Fotokite, as it is called, can avoid some of the issues faced by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are banned without a special licence because of safety and privacy concerns. "It doesn't rely on GPS [ Global Positioning System], sophisticated machine vision, radio, it doesn't even use a compass. Most crashes today happen because of GPS, radio or piloting issues," says Dr Lupashin.