Drones: they come in peace

[Geee]

UK Telegraph:

Forget the scare stories about spying or remote assassinations. Drones - the small unmanned aircraft that may soon fill our skies - are here to help

 

Lying on the shelves of Brig Gen Al Palmer's office, opposite a photograph of the air chief posing in front of a fighter jet, are all the components one would need to build a small drone. Scattered about are motors, circuit boards, propellers and body parts. A few yards behind me, in the corridor, hangs a six-rotor "hexacopter", designed to capture aerial footage so clear it could be used to count the individual tiles on the roof of a house.

 

But, despite the brigadier general's military background, these are not drones designed to patrol the tribal regions of Pakistan, picking off terrorists with precision missiles. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Palmer is developing "happy" drones - unmanned aircraft of all shapes and sizes that will deliver pizzas, track wildlife, survey crops and search for people lost in the wilderness.

"We don't even like to call them drones," says the retired airman, leaning back in his chair behind a large desk. What Palmer's team, based at the University of North Dakota, are developing, he says, are Unmanned Aircraft Systems (or UAS for short) that are going to benefit - and, potentially, revolutionise - society. By the end of the next decade, according to experts, there could be more than 10,000 unmanned aircraft roving the skies of America, with a number not too far behind that inhabiting UK air space.