Can a drone lift my dog?
Kev Gilpin, Leicest er
AWhoa, whoa, whoa. Even if a drone could lift your dog, it should not lift your dog. Dogs are notoriously bad pilots. With their soft fur and penchant for cuddles, they also deserve to treated well. So, as long as you promise to keep things humane, let’s sidestep the canine part of the equation and look instead at general load carrying.
Pretty much every consumer drone on the market will be ill-equipped to carry any more than its own weight, particularly since shifting (or wriggling) loads tend to throw off computerised flight stabilisation.
You’ll need to look to the commercial market if you really want to dangle something heavy 500 feet up. DJI’s farming-focused Agras MG-1, for example, uses eight rotors to drag a 10kg canister of pesticide airborne, but it’ll set you back around £10,000.
There are less-beefy models around, if 10 kilos is too much; invest something like £3,000 in a hex- or octo-copter and you should be able to carry a DSLR. Be warned, though: that payload will also cost you around half of the average flight time.