Airborne
Drones: Tools, Not Toys
When
it comes to commercial airborne drones, the world seems to be pointing in one
direction: delivery. Amazon wants to use flying drones to deliver packages
(Manjoo, 2016). A company called TacoCopter is trying to live up to its name by
using quad-rotor drones to deliver tacos (Mediati, 2012). Even Google is
getting in on the action, testing their own delivery drone system (Barr &
Bensinger, 2014). The big companies seem to think that delivery drones are the
wave of the future.
Dr.
Pippa Malmgren sees the market differently. An economist and best-selling
author, Dr. Malmgren firmly believes that delivering food and parcels isn’t where the drone market is heading.
Instead, she believes that the true future of the drone is as a data-collecting
tool (Malmgren, 2017). I want to focus on her arguments, because she has
literally put her money where her mouth is: Dr. Malmgren is one of the founders
of H Robotics (website link: http://hrobotics.co.uk/),
which develops and sells drones aimed at the commercial market. Here is what
the base H Robotics drone looks like:
Image source: Malmgren, 2016
In her 2016 article, Dr. Malmgren makes the following
statement: “…just as you would not confuse a Chevy and a Ferrari, you should
know that drones are very different from each other”. This is a statement with
which I wholeheartedly agree. As we have already seen in both this blog and
others, multiple companies are developing ground and sea-based drones for all
types of commercial purposes; it’s not surprising to the see the same kind of
development with commercial quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Dr.
Malmgren also states, in both her 2017 and 2016 articles, that she doesn’t
think the idea of drones as delivery vehicles will take off (pun intended)
because they are dangerous. A thirty-plus-pound drone, flying over a
residential neighborhood, presents all kinds of hazards; children and dogs will
be drawn to it, and if it falls, it will leave serious damage in its wake. To
make her point, she posts a video of a camera drone almost crushing slalom
skier Marcel Hirscher. It is a very convincing video, so I am linking it
here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeviAWB0i4Y
Given how many drones would have to fly on a daily
basis to meet Amazon’s delivery demands, it is inevitable that some would crash
and cause injury, especially since so many of them would have to fly over
heavily populated areas. I find myself agreeing with Dr. Malmgren here as well;
delivery may well be left to the ground-based drones. At the very least, aerial
drone delivery sounds as if it will be far more complex to pull off than we
even think today.
What
then is the future of the quad-rotor drone? As I stated earlier in this blog,
Dr. Malmgren thinks that the answer is data collection. She envisions her
drones being used for broadcasting, mine valuation, search and rescue, and
insurance analysis (Malmgren, 2016), to name just a few functions. The desired
end state is a highly modular and customizable drone that can be used for
anything the user can imagine. Her goal appears to be to make the H Robotics
drone a quad-copter Swiss Army knife of sorts.
This
is where I think aerial drones are headed as well. The H Robotics drone is
highly customizable and modular, which I think is the key to all these
platforms. The most successful drones will be the ones who allow the customer
to use them for whatever they envision, rather than dictate to the customer how
they should use the system. Drones that allow for user creativity will be the
ones that thrive; human imagination is limitless, and drones can be that
imagination’s next tool.
References
Barr, A. & Bensinger, G. (2014). Google is testing delivery drone system. Retrieved
from
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-reveals-delivery-drone-project-1409274480
Malmgren, P. (2016). Drones and the coming 4D world. Retrieved from
malmgren?articleId=7552070594417338614
Malmgren, P. (2017). Commercial drones: the smallest and most profitable part of the drone
market by the founder of @H_Robotics. Retrieved
from
pippa-malmgren?trk=mp-reader-card
Manjoo, F. (2016). Think
Amazon’s drone delivery idea is a gimmick? Think again. Retrieved
is-a-gimmick-think-again.html
Mediati, N. (2012). TacoCopter deliverys tacos by quadrocopter: is this for real? [updated].
quadrocopter_is_this_for_real_.html
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