First Successful Lightning Triggering and Guiding Using a Drone

News Highlights: ◆ We have achieved the world's first successful lightning triggering and guiding using a drone by harnessing electric field fluctuations. ◆ We developed and validated a lightning protection cage design that prevents malfunction or damage even when the drone is struck directly by lightning. This design can also be implemented on commercial drones. ◆ In the future, we aim to protect cities and infrastructure with "lightning drones," working toward a society free from lightning-related damage. TOKYO - April 18, 2025 - NTT Corporation (Headquarters: Chiyoda, Tokyo; President and CEO: Akira Shimada; hereinafter "NTT") has become the first in the world to successfully trigger and guide lightning using a drone. This experiment also demonstrated, under natural lightning conditions, the effectiveness of both the drone's lightning protection technology and the electric field-based lightning triggering method. These results are expected to contribute to further research on the ... Read full article.