Facebook is building a V-shaped unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, to help the company with its Internet.org project that aims to beam Internet access to the 5 billion people that don't have it yet.At the F8 conference Thursday, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer revealed images of the company's first such product: the Aquila, a solar-powered drone with the mass of a small car and a wingspan wider than that of a 737 jetliner.
Facebook acquired five employees from drone startup Ascenta last March. The team built the Zephyr a drone that could fly for two weeks on solar power alone. With its distinctive U-shape, the Aquila appears to be a direct descendant.
This would be done through a drone that has been given the codename Aquila, where the Aquila drone sports a wingspan that is comparable to that of a Boeing 767, and yet it will rely on lightweight materials that enable it to be lighter than a car.
At the conference, the company showed off nearly 50 apps for Messenger, including one that turns text messages into songs and another that allows a user to search for and send an animated GIF to express a mood.
Facebook intends to use the Aquila drone to send Internet connectivity to 60,000 to 90,000 feet on the ground via lasers, not to mention handle communications between drones, it is a sheer engineering miracle to say the least.
Aquila is the first complete concept we’ve seen come out of Facebook’s acqui-hires of engineers from UK-based Ascenta, unveiled nearly a year ago today. Facebook says it’ll begin test flights this summer, with a broader rollout over the next several years.
