Cleaning facades, windows, and factory chimneys at height can now be done not by a person, but by a drone. Russian schoolchildren have developed a prototype drone capable of performing cleaning work in hard-to-reach and dangerous places — and have already tested it in flight.
According to Geoscan Group, a team of schoolchildren from the city of Sim, Chelyabinsk Oblast, assembled the device based on the Geoscan Pioneer quadcopter. They equipped it with a liquid supply system and successfully sprayed a water solution directly in flight during tests.
The project authors initially considered it for servicing objects where it is difficult or unsafe for a person to work directly. To control the drone, the schoolchildren developed a program for autonomous flight along specified points.
In the future, the prototype can be refined. For example, by adding interchangeable modules — brushes, sprayers for disinfection, and other nozzles. It is also planned to implement a system for recognizing contamination and automatically building a route.
The development took first place in the "Design Project" nomination at the All-Russian robotics competition "Hello, Pioneer!", organized by Geoscan Group.
As Mikhail Lutsky, head of the company's educational product development department, noted, such projects help schoolchildren not just assemble devices, but go through the entire development cycle — from idea to testing and refinement.