Stanford PHD student designs drone with potential to be used for disaster relief
A PHD student at Stanford University is creating a robot that can stick itself to a wall, ceilings or buildings and collect information about its surrounding environment for ten consecutive minutes. Morgan Pope, the student, noted the lack of endurance, but stated he believed in its capabilities in the future to be used for disaster relief. 

A Stanford pHd student is creating drones with unique skill sets that could help with disaster relief.

Morgan Pope, the student creating the flying robots in Stanford’s Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab, recently wrote an article in IEEE Spectrum introducing the world to his drone's perching abilities.

The drone is capable of sticking itself to the wall or a ceiling of buildings, where it can then use sensors to collect information about its surrounding environment. This new capability could be extremely helpful in a disaster situation where it's necessary to get accurate data about the surrounding damage as quickly as possible.

As Pope noted in the article, small drones can only stay airborne for "tens of minutes at a time." That lack of endurance makes it difficult for drones to collect enough data in disaster situations, with many missions going unaccomplished. The ability to mount to a wall or ceiling could change that.

This is not the first time Pope has worked on a drone that could be used for disaster relief. A year prior, Pope wrote an article in IEEE Spectrum about a drone he made called SCAMP — the first robot that can fly to a wall, perch on it, and climb vertically up it.

Here's SCAMP in action: