Beneficial Uses for UAVs in the Modern World
Unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have made tremendous technological strides in the past decade. This technology has aided in the progress of many different industries, including: military, law enforcement, agriculture, cargo delivery, and marketing.
Most notably, militaries and law enforcement agencies across the world have adopted UAV technologies ranging from reconnaissance and surveillance to armed units for defensive or security purposes. One of the advancements in this industry, known as SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), allows UAVs to utilize pre-installed GPS data in combination with specialized programs which perceives the three dimensional world and actively maps the environment that it is in. Programs such as these are able to remove human pilots from immediate danger and place them in an environment which allows for more ethical and precise decision making.
These same technologies are finding uses in agriculture. With the ability to map a highly detailed representation of its environment, a UAV, for example, can be used by a farmer to significantly decrease the cost, time, and labor required to analyze soil, manage irrigation, plant seeds, and water and spray crops. Due to the alarmingly short supply of agricultural labor, this technology has proved to be a boon to the industry and is projected to advance in the years to come.
There are many places in the world where people inhabit that are extremely remote, making it difficult or impossible to deliver products and supplies by boat, car, or traditional aircraft. For example, many native villages in rural Alaska have traditionally had supplies delivered in bulk once every month or so. With the advent of UAVs, governments and privately owned humanitarian entities have invested in the development of technologies that are able to more regularly air drop supplies to these types of communities with pinpoint accuracy and little to no risk of damage to the product, effectively allowing these communities to thrive along with the rest of the civilized world.
The popularity of UAVs in marketing and advertisement is also understandably growing. UAVs with advanced photographic and video recording equipment grant the opportunity for companies to take advantage of a new visual perspective to put on display. Birds-eye views of resorts and other locations is a great way to communicate the type of experience that a company has to offer its potential customers.
Despite the futuristic abilities that UAVs currently offer, this industry is only in its infancy and will undoubtedly prove itself to be an invaluable tool in the advancement of civilization. According to an article published in the summer of 2020 by prnewswire.com, “The global Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) market size is projected to reach USD 133.5 Billion by 2026, from USD 25.9 Billion in 2019,” that is a 415% increase. The growth of this market is inevitable and certainly not limited to the industries listed in this article; however, any technological breakthrough relies on the user to apply its capabilities in an ethical and communally productive manner.
