Prof. Beard recently received a patent titled “Aerial Recovery of Small and Micro Air Vehicles.” There are many scenarios where a large manned or unmanned mothership is tasked with picking up a small drone. This poses technical challenges since the mothership is typically flying much faster than the small drone. The basic idea outlined in the patent is for the mothership to deploy a cable that drags a drogue that can be used to capture the small drone mid-air, as shown in the figure to the right.