Drones or tiny remote-control copters with cameras on-board, have seen big increase in popularity since last year. Primarily used by the military for surveillance purposes, they became quite commercial and easily accessible to common people which in turn led to some serious privacy and security concerns. While the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), the national aviation authority of the United States, has made it mandatory for all drones and their owners to be formally registered for safety, these devices are still growing in a variety of markets around the globe.
As the New Year began it was expected that drones would be one of the hottest categories at the CES 2016 Tech Show in Las Vegas. One of the most intriguing drones announced was the Parrot Disco which offers an unusual design. Instead of using multiple propellers, it comes with a more plane-like design with fixed but removable wings and a single propeller at the back. While the removable wings help in storage, when attached, they improve in aerodynamics and offers extended flight time, up to 45 minutes which is better than most traditional drones. The Parrot Disco can be controlled with the usual remote and can fly at speeds of about 50mph. The nose-embedded 14MP camera can take 1080p videos and it doesn’t require any special piloting skills to control the flight.
Another recent interesting development happened in Taiwan where a bunch of researchers have engineered a drone to be controlled by an Apple Watch using hand gestures. Being researched since 2013, the researchers have been working with National Chung Hsing University on developing a programming language called ‘Dong’ which once installed on an Apple Watch, can recognize and convert hand movements into instructions to control a drone. The researchers have successfully managed to fly a Parrot AR Drone where they managed to control height, pitch, and tilt with simple up and down, and right and left movements. The researchers also confirmed that this software can be used almost any wearable device that consists of motion sensors.
The evolution of drones has been quite fast and it has been predicted that the adoption of drones will be four folds in just one year. Big names like Amazon and Google are expected to use drones in their distribution and delivery networks by the year 2017. UK-based Intelligent Energy recently announced that it has developed a hydrogen fuel cell to extend the flight time for drones. According to a report the coming years will see the global commercial drone market shaping around applications in a bunch of industries including agriculture, energy, utilities, mining, construction, real estate, news media, and film production.
