In just 16 days XKCD author Randall Munroe releases a new book titled How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. He’s just released an excerpt from the chapter “How to Catch a Drone,” in which he actually enlisted the assistance of tennis star Serena Williams.
An anonymous reader writes:
Serena and her husband Alexis just happened to have a DJI Mavic Pro 2 with a broken camera — and Munroe asked her to try to smash it with tennis balls. “My tentative guess was that a champion player would have an accuracy ratio around 50 when serving, and take 5-7 tries to hit a drone from 40 feet. (Would a tennis ball even knock down a drone? Maybe it would just ricochet off and cause the drone to wobble! I had so many questions.)
“Alexis flew the drone over the net and hovered there, while Serena served from the baseline…”
His blog has the rest of the story, and Munroe has even illustrated the experiment, promising that the book also contains additional anti-drone strategies, an analysis of other sports projectiles, and “a discussion with a robot ethicist about whether hitting a drone with a tennis ball is wrong.”
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot