There are many misconceptions about drones that circulate the worldwide sphere of common knowledge.
Some only see them as a swarm of recreational nuisances that hover above our local neighborhoods, and others see them as harbingers of much, much worse.
Today, let’s take a moment and squash the public’s perceptions about drones to convince the masses that they do much more for the world than just annoy the neighbors and kill people as instruments of war overseas.
Locating and Safely Detonating Land Mines
The United Nations reports that each year, land mines kill somewhere between 15,000–20,000 people.
Sadly, the majority of these individuals are innocent civilians like women, children, and the elderly, as opposed to armed combatants.
Many mines remain — hidden — from World War II. Since the 1960s, as many as 110 million mines have been placed around the world in an estimated 70 countries.
Harshwardhan Zala, a 14-year-old boy in India, made the news recently for inventing a drone that could detect and detonate land mines.
His revolutionary life-saving drone is equipped with infrared sensors, an RGB sensor, a thermal meter, and a 21-megapixel camera with a mechanical shutter that takes high-resolution pictures.
It works by detecting land mines from a distance, and then, once the area has been cleared, by dropping small bombs to destroy the land mine safely and without any casualties.
He first thought of the idea when he was watching TV and learned that “a large number of soldiers succumb to injuries sustained due to land mine blasts while defusing them manually.”
His first design to address this problem was a robot, which wasn’t as successful as the drone would prove to be.
Each time a mine was detonated, the robot was destroyed in the process.
The drone was the next iteration of his inventive process. It could detect the subterranean explosives without the risk of premature detonation.
There is another team, led by Massoud Hassani, that is also designing a drone to detect and detonate land mines.
The device, called Mine Kafon Drone (MKD), will join Zala’s drone in ridding the world of these deadly explosives in less than 10 years.
Fighting Fires
By using aerial thermography technologies, an equipped drone can fly over the site of a fire that is almost extinguished to identify smoldering hot spots that might not be visible to the naked eye.
Drones using aerial thermography can quickly find people who are still trapped within active blazes and need immediate medical attention without further endangering firefighters.
By using the thermal imaging technology, firefighters can create a quick and clear pathway to the entrapped civilian, which decreases the chances of death or serious injury for both parties.
Drones can also provide key information for firefighters in forest fires and other types of large consuming blazes. When a fire is so big and stretches so far, it can be difficult to know what steps to take with only the use of the information available on the ground.
David Celino, chief fire warden for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, has the following to say about the implementation of firefighting fighting practices: “Knowing how a fire burns and where it might move next is the most important part of firefighting.”
Drones can help firefighters stay one step ahead.
Recently, firefighters from the Fire Department of New York used a drone for the first time to monitor a dangerous blaze, illustrating how local governments deploy remote-controlled aircrafts for risky public safety and police work.
Last month, an $85,000 drone that was equipped with high-definition and infrared cameras, similar to the drone that Zala designed for disarming land mines, was flown over a four-alarm fire in the Bronx to keep and eye on the roof of an apartment building that firefighters feared would collapse.
Only two firefighters suffered minor injuries in the fire when it could have been far worse.
FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Dan Donoghue released the following statement:
The roof started to fail and we had a lot of great radio reports, but that’s only verbal, so with the drone we had good visual pictures and it really helped us make decisions to put this fire out and keep our members safe. Seeing it is helpful.
The FDNY has been training with its drone attached to a tether for more than six months.
The Monday fire last month offered the FDNY its first time to try out its drone for real.
Timothy Herlocker, director of the department’s operations center, said in a statement that the drone offered a good view of the roof while firefighters were opening vents and pouring water on the fire:
The idea behind it is to keep an eye and our firefighters while they’re operating on the roof where the Incident Commander can’t see them. That image is fed directly to the incident commander, and then it’s also shared with senior decision makers in the fire department.
And it worked.
The four-alarm blaze could have consumed many lives, both civilian and firefighter.
But because of the intel the drone provided, no lives were lost to the flames.
Delivering Blood and Crucial Medical Supplies to Remote Areas
Forget Flirtey and Amazon Prime Air. Zipline is far past testing drones for deliveries. The company is actually making deliveries with drones.
And these drones aren’t delivering pizzas or Kindle Fires, either; they’re delivering crucial medical supplies to needy people in the most remote areas of the world.
The American startup drone company says the following about its mission on its website:
More than two billion people lack adequate access to essential medical products, often due to challenging terrain and gaps in infrastructure. Because of this, over 2.9 million children under the age of 5 die every year. And up to 150,000 pregnancy-related deaths could be avoided each year if mothers had reliable access to safe blood.
The company made the news a few months back when it announced a partnership with the government of Rwanda to deliver blood and other crucial medical supplies to rural areas that are difficult to reach by land.
Zipline is comprised of engineers who formerly worked at influential companies such as SpaceX, Google, Lockheed Martin, and other top tech companies.
Its drones will initially be used to deliver blood, plasma, and coagulants to hospitals across rural western Rwanda, helping to cut wait times from hours to minutes.
Fifteen “zip” drones will fly around the clock in winds up to 20 mph and light rain if necessary.
Zipline’s services will be paid by Rwanda’s health department on a per-delivery basis. The drone deliveries will cost no more than current delivery methods, like by motorbikes or ambulances.
A wide variety of companies — including Amazon, DHL, and Singapore Post — have demonstrated drone deliveries elsewhere that use aircrafts that can touch down at both ends of their journeys.
Drones have already been used for humanitarian purposes elsewhere in Africa, including in a now-ended project to deliver blood and stool samples in Madagascar, and a Red Cross initiative to monitor a refugee camp in Uganda.
Hopefully, Rwanda’s government will fully jump on board with Zipline’s incentives and use its technology to its fullest potential, saving thousands of lives along the way.
The Bottom Line
As with just about everything in this world, there will always be one person who abuses their power and responsibility and creates a negative image for an entire sector.
Hopefully, the applications we talked about earlier will shed a Good Samaritan light on drones and their uses.
From the sound of it, drones will lead the future innovative applications and save millions of lives along the way.
That’s all for now.
Until next time,
John Peterson
Pro Trader Today