Let’s be honest, there are some weird uses of drones, such as laundry service, flower delivery, and carb loading. See other creative uses HERE, from window cleaning to fishing. Still, the many epic drone failures that leave you wondering whether drones are really such a great idea.
But drones started out as purely a military tool. A vehicle that could fly without a pilot was indispensable as a lower risk way to deploy torpedoes, for example. In World War I, Orville Wright helped design the Kettering Bug, the first U.S. unmanned flying machine. After some not-so-great air tests, this pioneer drone was ultimately not so useful in military combat. Once set on its course, it couldn’t be adjusted (so — oops — it might drop explosives on the wrong troops), and it had to crash land, making it an expensive single-flight machine.
After this buggy drone, technology improved rapidly, resulting in military drones used for surveillance of battle areas, identification of targets, and airstrikes. And the last couple of decades have seen an explosion of other practical uses. In commercial farming, drones are assessing crop yields, a bottom-line agricultural metric.
A recent study describes counting rice plants with drones informed by machine learning. Says study author Jianguo Yao, "The new technique uses UAVs to capture RGB images—images composed primarily with red, green, and blue light—of the paddy field. These images are then processed using a deep learning network that we have developed, called RiceNet, which can accurately identify the density of rice plants in the field.”
Wildlife management also benefits from deployment of drones. Like rice farming, animal conservation requires counting individuals to monitor how populations are faring. For example, engineers have equipped drones to track elephants in East Africa. Each drone has an AI engine that recognizes individual elephants from its training on their images. Because elephants move around at night, the AI analyzes thermal imaging of their body heat.
The way an individual elephant moves or behaves is a window into its its stress level and health. Says conservation doctoral student Obafemi Jinadu, "We try to get as much information as we can from the animal's body language.” As the conservation drones patrol the Masai Mara National Reserve, they will hopefully also discourage poachers.
Drones are proving their merit at an even broader geographic scale in understanding climate change. In a new study, researchers used drones to help evaluate the condition of vegetation — especially mosses — in Antarctica as conditions continue to warm.
Drones can access icy, remote areas that are otherwise inaccessible to science, to capture images of moss beds, which are sensitive indicators of Antarctic ecosystem health. (See HERE some of the perspectives gained by drones of the fragile ecosystem.) Says study author Juan Sandino, "Piloting these flights was at times challenging; however all the systems performed well under extreme cold conditions."
So, drones are extending human reach way beyond the ugly ramifications of battles.
