The robot, developed by German engineer Bernd Brodbeck and Kiener Maschinenbau, a manufacturer of automated industrial systems, is a tool to build solar power plants rather than operate them.

FORBES: How Robots Are Making Solar Power Cheaper

The robot aircraft, known as aerosondes, are the brainchildren of an engineer called Tad McGeer and are being developed in a collaboration between the Insitu Group, a firm based in White Salmon, Washington State, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

ECONOMIST: Robots in the cockpit

If needed, staff in a control centre can see and hear everything the field engineer is seeing and hearing via the camera and microphone mounted on the robot arm.

BBC: IBM's robot sidekick aims to aid field engineers