Real World Applications of Drones

Overlook of current uses and future applications.

Real-World Applications for Drones    By Logan Kugler
Communications of the ACM, November 2019, Vol. 62 No. 11, Pages 19-21
10.1145/3360911

 In June, Amazon announced it was close to being able to offer for package deliveries by drone for its Prime Air service. That same month, Uber said it plans to test food delivery by aerial drone in crowded cities. And drone delivery company Flytrex already touts the ability to deliver drinks via unmanned vehicle on the golf course.

Despite such announcements, drones are not crowding the skies over major cities and population centers just yet. But that may be about to change.

After several years of hype, widespread drone usage may be close to ready for primetime.

Drones increasingly are being deployed in a number of compelling real-world use cases. These use cases have drone companies and enthusiasts bullish that, no matter what happens, there are serious real-world applications for drone technology today and in the near future that will disrupt life and business as we know it.

Drone-Assisted Photography/Surveying
"Traditionally, we've seen drones being used for photography and surveying," says Eric Peck, CEO of Swoop Aero, an Australian company that delivers medical supplies via aerial drone. "It's all about data capture, because data really is driving the ability to generate economic growth at the moment."

From construction to insurance to real estate to agriculture, the ability to survey and photograph wide swaths of land and hard-to-reach locations with aerial drones is valuable to companies. For instance, high-quality photos and videos from different aerial angles can better showcase residential properties up for sale, more effectively highlighting elements that appeal to buyers.

Aerial footage shot by drones is less expensive than manually taking aerial footage from a helicopter. One drone photographer interviewed by The Baltimore Sun noted the cost differences: "I can drive up to my destination, plug my equipment in, and be done [photographing] in five or 10 minutes," said Jack Hardway, owner of a drone photography firm. "It doesn't cost me $5,000. It costs me pennies to put that thing in the air."

The cost is one benefit. The ability to collect more visual data from more angles than from a traditional camera also is important.

A Santa Monica, CA-based company called DroneBase uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or aerial drones) to offer, among other services, aerial surveying of building rooftops to give insurance companies an easy way to assess damage related to claims. For insurance and surveying purposes, aerial drones offer the ability to cover more ground while traversing more areas and angles than might be possible (or affordable) with traditional manned aircraft.

Other use cases include surveying and monitoring progress at construction sites, and performing simple regulatory inspections for commercial real estate properties. Aerial drones are even used to fly around warehouses and find supplies or products faster and more accurately than humans do.

Aerial drones also come in handy in agricultural applications. They offer a dual benefit in this context. First, drones are used to survey fields. Instead of having to traverse hundreds or thousands of acres on foot or by vehicle, farmers have the ability to fly drones faster and more efficiently over large areas. That helps reduce the time it takes to monitor fields, as well as reducing the amount of fertilizer and pesticides they must use to maintain crops.

"We identify diseases and pests and fungus and weeds in the crop at an earlier stage," U.K. farmer Colin Rayner told German broadcaster DW. Some drones are even used to spray fields with pesticides. According to DW, Chinese drone company DJI sold 20,000 pesticide-spraying drones in 2018 alone.  .... "