After dark, crime scenes, accident sites, infrastructure repairs etc. require lighting be set up so workers can see what they're doing. By necessity, these portable light sources aren't much taller than the workers themselves, causing glare and work-obscuring shadows. On top of that, they're cumbersome to set up.

U.S. company Freefly Systems has a much better solution. Their Flying Sun 1000 system consists of the company's heavy-lift Alta X drone festooned with 288 LEDs, which can illuminate scenes below as large as 437 feet in diameter, or 137,000 square feet.

The LEDs are positioned so that the rotor wash provides cooling.

Obviously the light intensity drops off at maximum height, as you can see in the chart below. (A "foot candle" is a unit of light measurement equal to one lumen per square foot.)

There are no cables to trip over. The drone's onboard batteries can keep it aloft and lit for five to ten minutes, which is admittedly not that long. For extended operations, the drone can be tethered to a generator on the ground, allowing it to run indefinitely. (The company recommends the drone be brought down and inspected after seven continuous days of flight time.)

The company is pitching the system for the aforementioned applications, as well as search-and-rescue operations and security applications. The $60,000 asking price keeps this firmly out of the consumer sector, at least for now. The company also offers a lower-priced $50,000 Flying Sun 500 system, but curiously, they don't list the specification differences between the two models beyond the lower price.

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