The UAV industry just might be the one of the most revolutionary and perspective ones in the present times, as new applications and creative uses that could make our lives a whole lot easier and less resource demanding seem to surface almost every day.
One of such applications was tested last year in November at a winery owned by the University of California, where a UAV called RMax was used to spray rows of grape plants. The UAV managed to shower 40 rows using two 2-gallon tanks of water in 6 minutes, as opposed to the previously used method involving tractors which needed a whole hour to perform the same procedure. That makes the UAV method ten times faster! This UAV model has been used in Japan since the year 1990 to aid the elderly farmers and for a more precise approach to spraying to avoid residential area contamination.
In Japan UAVs are used to spray nearly half of the country’s rice field, but in The United States tractors are still pretty much the only method used. This leaves the America’s 1 million acres of grape fields a huge oppurtinity for UAV developers or anyone that wants to make money in the UAV industry. This is however but a sliver of the possible application that are waiting to be taken advantage off and realized. The public image of UAVs as military weaponry still remains an issue.
„The “robotics revolution” will take of when you have innovation crossing with profit-seeking—people coming up with new ideas and new ways to make money off it.”
Peter Singer, the Brookings Institution
Other uses involve anything you can imagine, every person should be able to think of atleast one possible application that would make everyone’s lives much easier. In one of my articles I mentioned the experimental newspaper delivery, which is a good example. UAVs could deliver anything, fast food, subscribtion magazine and regular packages, rendering any current delivery service obsolete and ending the age unreliable, often late, deliveries. (How many times has it happened to you that your delivery was postponed due to traffic problems?)
The most important possible applications of UAVs are in emergency services. In the future UAVs could be used to respond to calls immidiately and extinguish fires, immobilize criminals, locate people in life threatening situations and even rescue your cat from trees! The uses are almost endless and now the most important element in their realization are people willing to take the risk and invest into the required technology and start making their living on these little buzzing helpers.
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