Photographer uses drone with thermal camera to find missing 6-year-old boy

There are some reasonable calculations that we can make.

I am going to consider a slightly absurd situation. I am going to assume n vehicles flying at low speed and one vehicle flying at high speed and to see how the area they sweep depends on the total power consumed, with all the vehicles being the same size and that they fly at the same altitude.

Power required to fly at speed v is Cv3. The high speed vehicle flies at v, the low speed vehicles fly at v'. Thus we have the relation Cv3 = Cn(v')3, i.e. v' = v x n1/3.

Swept area is then some length L that is the same for both vehicles times the speeds, i.e. vL for the fast vehicle and nvL x n1/3.

The ratio is then n x n1/3, i.e. n4/3. So if you choose n=2 you get 2.5 times the rate of area sweep of the single aircraft, n=3 gives 4.3 times the rate of a single aircraft, n=4 6.3, n=16 gives 40 times the rate.

Of course, the kind of drones that are relevant are smaller than helicopters, may not fly at the same altitude, can't land people etcetera, but even when we assume that they're as large as helicopters and simply fly slowly we get this kind of thing.

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