10 AMAZING WAYS DRONES ARE CHANGING THE WORLD

06

SURVEYING ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

AS MANY ARCHAEOLOGICAL sites are in remote locations, drones are a cheap and effective way to reach and survey these locations. Drones enable scientists to get a bird’s-eye view that reveals new information about a site. An md4200 microdrone UAV was used in Tuketa, in Russia’s Altai Mountains, to survey ancient burial mounds (called Kurgans). This resulted in a 3D map of the site that could be used by scientists to measure the volume of the burial mounds. Professor Ian Lindsay from Purdue University used a DJI Phantom 2 to capture aerial data of burial mounds in Armenia.

DELIVERING PACKAGES

07 AS THE DRONE started to become a mainstream product, it didn’t take long for forward-thinking companies to start looking at how they could begin integrating them into their businesses. One of the most obvious angles was as a means of delivering small parcels and packages. The potential in this area is huge, and the prospect of reducing the carbon footprint or delays due to traffic – or even the man hours sending people around the country to deliver items by hand – has got some of the big players looking at rolling a drone delivery service out sooner rather than later. Amazon is currently working on Prime Air to deliver small packages in under 30 minutes, and UPS has started testing their delivery drones that deploy from the top of their van.