Drone Boom: Why Drones Aren’t Just for Dropping Bombs Anymore

Paul Detrick

When you hear the word drone you may immediately think of bombs being dropped in the Middle East or thesurveillance of citizens here in the United States, but engineers and aviation geeks have wondered for decades if unmanned flight might solve a few of our world’s problems or just make our lives a little easier.

Over 30 years ago, science magazines wondered if drones would “sniff out pollution,” or, “make pilots obsolete,” and engineers are saying that those ideas may be possible now.

“The technology has reached a point where it can be very inexpensive to buy [unmanned aerial system technology],” says John Villasenor, an engineer at UCLA and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Villasenor says that advances in GPS, airframe design, and flight control methods have made unmanned flight available to pretty much anyone.

http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/08/20/drone-boom-why-drones-arent-just-for-dr