What Drones Could Do

Save lives:

Christopher Vo, education director for the DC Area Drone User Group, told me recently at a drone fly-in in Northern Virginia that these robots are uniquely equipped to transport items in emergency situations and hard-to-reach locations. Projects are underway to use drones to deliver vaccines in remote regions that lack infrastructure, and drones have already been used for surveillance in disaster areas. They could also drop off emergency aid—food, water, medical supplies—to people stranded or trapped, when ground delivery isn’t an option (for example).

Vo also mentioned defibrillators for victims of sudden cardiac arrest. “Five minutes, that’s the maximum time I can wait for one of these things. If I have to call an ambulance they could take 20 minutes to get there, and that’s too late,” he said. “Whereas if I could call a drone, a drone doesn’t have to wait in traffic. A drone could just go straight to me. And I could get there in five minutes.”

So mock Amazon all you want, but not drone delivery itself.

Drones might also revolutionize farming:

[E]very farmer has to deal with problems such as pest control, fertilizer application, and crop management, things the EPA says the average farm spends about $109,359 per year. A cheap drone costs a tiny fraction of that, and can help farmers cut costs in lots of ways.

According to Leo Reed, a chemist who licenses crop dusters in Indiana, demand for them in the state has doubled since 2007. In Iowa, agricultural aviation is a $214 million business annually. Crop dusters are also notoriously dangerous. The planes fly just 10 feet above the ground at speeds of about 150 miles per hour. With drones, the pilot is taken out of the equation, and crashes are likely to be in wide-open fields, not heavily populated areas.