The capability of drones to fly, hold an object, and be programmed to work on a variety of different tasks has made this technology life-changing in many ways. Drones help businesses, public services, and even individuals.
Many diverse industries are benefiting from the technology of drones. The military needs them for modern defense and weaponry, social media recommends them for travel vloggers, and even the food industry is joining in to make meal delivery faster and easier. Drone technology is also making the lives of a lot of professionals easier in completing complicated tasks that are much better done with a drone.
I am sure even the passive hobbyist (perhaps such as yourself) is going to benefit from drones themselves as well. I felt that the first time I took a drone along on my travels. I never thought I would need it because I found it expensive (yes, I am a minimalist when spending). But I instantly justified the splurge when I first flew the drone. Taking travel photos and videos became a brand new experience for me once more!
Drones have seemingly limitless potential for making certain daily tasks easier to accomplish as well. Thankfully, drones are not really luxury items for most people anymore, thanks to advancements in technology that made them more user-friendly and fit for consumer use, not to mention much more affordable. In this article, I will provide you with a few of the benefits of drones and the overall technology that made them possible:
1. Makes Inspections More Efficient
When I talk about inspections, this actually can include many different types of industries. We can talk about how the police are being aided in their work, making certain situations much safer and easier to deal with than previously. It also includes services like plumbing, roofing, engineering, mapping, safety, and disaster management.
Crime scenes, particularly areas that are actively dangerous for police personnel to access such as a hostage crisis, can easily be recorded by police using a drone. It also helps them with investigations when searching in areas that are complicated to reach. Rescuing a hostage or finding a weak spot to infiltrate a criminal to arrest can be efficiently accomplished by drones that are specifically built to run silently.
Plumbers and repairmen can use drones to inspect areas located at an elevated location without the need for them to risk going up on a high place such as a rooftop. This helps them determine if there is damage, while avoiding having to go up if there is no work that needs to be done. This benefit also applies to areas that are initially hard to reach within a building or object that needs repair.
Engineers can benefit greatly when they use a drone, because drone technology allows them to make even more accurate calculations for the building they are constructing. Drones are also beneficial for them if they need to double-check something on the building in a more efficient and convenient manner.
Safety and disaster management can be performed with ease by engineers and with much more detail using drones. Companies need to do routine safety inspections of their infrastructure such as power lines, pipelines for water and gas, bridge foundations, and a whole lot more.
Geological mapping and agricultural surveying and crop monitoring also benefit from drone technology. All you have to do is install a camera, preprogram a flight path, and the drone does the rest. This is an easier way to measure certain locations. Without drones, you would have to walk through the whole area, which can be tiresome, inefficient, and cause delays to your work.
Lastly, disaster management is provided with better readings by the use of drones. This is effective when studying active volcanoes, unstable buildings, areas at risk of a storm, or other natural disasters like a tsunami. It also helps experts evaluate the damage caused by such disasters as well. Weather forecasting also got an upgrade by using drones to collect information regarding weather in a certain area.
2. Helps Greatly With Scientific Research
Scientists who are researching dangerous places like active volcanoes or areas that spew fumes can finally observe seismic activity with better detail. All they have to do is attach the camera to the drone and then fly around the area that they need to study.
Wildlife researchers and conservationists widely use drones nowadays for researching all kinds of wildlife. This is effective in studying animal activity of dangerous wild animals such as leopards and wolves. It also helps researchers survey the habitat and search for any issues such as poaching or illegal deforestation. It is a potential ally in preserving nature and preventing the extinction of endangered animals.
Journalists can exploit the benefits of drone technology to make their research easier as well. When visiting remote areas, they can use the drone to provide more detailed information to shed light on the situations they are reporting on, such as the terrain of a remote location, or perhaps record places that might seem too dangerous for them to pass through.
One of the major benefits of drone technology for research purposes is that it cuts costs. Some tasks that previously required helicopters can now be performed by drones, particularly if there is only a need to record a more localized area. In this way, human labor is reduced, as well as costs for hiring and operating the helicopter.
3. Makes Delivery Easier
Distributing products such as your favorite pizza or a letter for your special someone will never be the same once drones become widely used for delivery. Drones can easily hold a parcel, depending on the payload attachment.
There are rumors that delivery companies and major online stores are currently developing solutions regarding drone usage. This is great in making jobs easier to do, keeping more people safe, and completely changing the shape of the delivery industry in the future.
However, if drones become widespread for delivery, the issues caused by large amounts of drone air traffic still need to be ironed out. This is why companies like Amazon are still developing strategies to make the user experience with drones more realistic for delivery purposes.
4. Helps Emergency Responders Save Lives
As explained earlier, drones can make delivery easier. With this same ability, health care services and emergency response units can help their patients more quickly and efficiently when the situation demands it.
Rescue operations require you to arrive on the scene quickly, and delays can cause serious repercussions. Delivery of relief goods to locations that are impossible to reach becomes possible with the help of a drone. It can also provide emergency help such as blood donations, first aid kits, and other items that can rescue someone’s life.
Health care services are already making advances in using drones to reduce human labor, lessen time consumption when performing a rescue operation, and make item deliveries more precise as they upgrade their drones and drone technology.
One notable advancement of drones for emergency response is that drones can be used to help locate lost people in the dark through their thermal sensor or night vision camera. The ability of drones to capture videos is also great for reporting suspicious activities to the police, which can potentially save lives as well.
5. Military Applications
Long before drones became a way to share some cool videos on social media, the military benefited greatly from drone technology. Drones can be used by the military for the following purposes:
- Air Strikes – the most well known use of drones by the military is for airstrikes. Called UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, these drones are equipped with missiles and bombs to launch airstrikes. This technology has been used by the U.S. military to bomb enemy territories and hideouts without risking any of their own soldiers’ lives.
- Bomb Detection – the small size of many drones allows them to penetrate small spaces with lessened risk of detection by the enemy. Drones can be used to either detonate bombs as a life-saving tactic and enemy distraction or as a detector by attaching a camera on it.
- Spying – drones are used by the military for surveillance. They can be equipped with cameras, and with thermal or night vision sensors when the situation calls for special equipment. These drones can act as spies to infiltrate bases and to count the number of enemies in a certain location.
The main benefit that we get from the military use of drones, even though it is used for warfare, is the fact that it keeps a country and its people safe, while lessening the risk to that nation’s soldiers.
6. Great For Recording Your Videos and Capturing Photos
As a traveler, I find this benefit to be the best advantage the average user can get from a drone. When I travel, I always want to make sure that I have a lot of angles of the different places I visit. When I purchased a drone, my experience with taking photos and videos became much more exciting.
It made me feel more excited to travel because of my newfound way of recording memories. I admit it’s something to be proud of to post a great video on social media. Using a drone for your photos and videos will take the cool factor to the next level. You can also use the drone to capture your whole neighborhood or take a photo of a fantastic view of nature from a bird’s eye view.
Some drones are also equipped with accessories for phones. And they can contain controls to help the camera app on your phone take photos and videos, just like monopods and some tripods. So if you love posting things you do on social media, for sure streaming or posting a video using your new drone will “wow” your friends.
Drones have majorly changed the way people do some things today. And we can be sure drone technology will make even more tasks easier to accomplish in the future. We’ve only begun this journey into the world of drone technology.
