Tuesday, October 8, 2013
More than a Bird's Eye View
There are now autonomous drone aircraft that can stay aloft for nearly five years at a go. That's 43,680 flight hours at a time. Amazing. By the time the aircraft is ready to make it's first landing it will probably have been obsolete for at least three years already. And if we've got drones that can keep an eye on someone for five years straight we know that some government agency has plans for it. Aside from the creepier uses however, I can imagine quite a few different scenarios where a drone flying continuously at 65,000 feet would be quite useful. Search and rescue operations, live map data, mobile satellite links, GPS-supplementing systems for mountainous regions--and more. I want to see one of these in action. Or at least a video feed being streamed from 65,000 feet up. And I think soon we'll be seeing drone aircraft that can stay aloft indefinitely--we'll just set them adrift on the atmosphere, like leaves floating on the surface of a pond, and they'll send back everything they can see below the surface.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That is an amazing technological advancement. I wonder how they are able to develop such toys. Imagine what there will be in another decade.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm excited to see it automated delivery and other drone assissted services. Wouldn't it be awesome to track an Amazon package in real time? See your drone drop down from out of the sky and leave your new game or movie right on the doorstep, that'll be RAD!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as someone who programmed medium-sized robots in high school, I think I now have an inherent mistrust of large vehicles manned by computers. Something about seeing my code run too many robots into walls. The idea of robot-run lawnmowers (a la Roomba) scares me too. This is cool, though, once I convince myself it won't crash.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty impressive to think about the technological leaps that we have made from 100 years ago where the thought of anything man-made being airborne for longer than a keenly designed paper airplane was absurd. I do share similar worries with the privacy implications that these drones carry, yet, just as the internet, I think the positive purposed may outweigh the negative.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about the airplane flying for that long. That's way awesome.
ReplyDelete