[jahewson]

There's going to be some problematic airflow around vehicles like this. The air behind and to the sides will be turbulent, I'm not sure a drone could safely approach a truck this closely. It might require more powerful motors.

A truck on the freeway could be even harder, a drone would need to hold 55mph, throw in a headwind of say 15mph and you'll need a 70mph drone. Even on a highway at 40 + 15mph you're looking at 55mph in an environment with overhead lines, other vehicles, people.

Takeoff would be harder still, once the drone is released from a truck then it's instantly doing 55mph, or more if there is a tailwind. Should there be a failure during this mavouvre, there's no safety mechanism: the drone would become a 55mph+ projectile heading straight towards the following car's windshield.

So it's insanely dangerous.

[AndrewKemendo]

The simple solution is to only deploy/mate when stopped.

[jahewson]

Yes but that's not really what OP was suggesting. A truck on the freeway might be in another state before it stops.

[josephjrobison]

How about putting up a windshield on the top part of the truck?

[smeyer]

Why would you do that? Then the truck would have bad aerodynamics all the time just in case a third party drone wanted to hitch a ride some of the time. If you're going to start using trucks in bulk to transport drones intentionally, then you can probably come up with much better designs.

[e12e]

> If you're going to start using trucks in bulk to transport drones intentionally, then you can probably come up with much better designs.

Indeed. I believe the design is called "trucks" ;-)

One could of course have stackable drones and fit them in an open lorry, and program the route, order the drones so that the could take off in sequence... I'm not sure it'd be worth it though. I could definitively see fleets of "drone hangar lorries" driving around, slowing down to let drones off with deliveries, and taking on returning drones. I suppose you could set up a couple of circuits in big cities, guaranteeing a flightpath of, say no more than n kilometres from any one address to the nearest circuit -- and the drones might hop from circuit to circuit -- possibly even with a charge-station in the lorries.

Or change the lorries with purpose-build/modded electrical trains... (and fill in dead-zones with electrical trolleybuses).

Come to think of it, fitting trolleybuses with a "roof hangar" and charging station might be best: they typically don't go very fast -- and even if they do, they regularly stop to take on/let off passengers. Sounds like a good match.