5 Ways Drones are Making the World a Better Place (Without Killing Anyone)

(Source: Global Post)   

Non-lethal drones are a “war dividend,” says Kristin Sandvik, director of the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies in Oslo and co-author of a recent paper assessing “the transformative potential of humanitarian drones and their possible impact on humanitarian action.”

“People don’t realize how fast things are changing,” says Patrick Meier, director of social innovation at the Qatar Computing Research Institute, adding that drones are only going to become more ubiquitous. “You’ve gone from UAVs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars a few years ago to the price of a cellphone and it’s not going to stop there: They’re getting cheaper, more sophisticated, more autonomous, more intelligent, smaller, lighter and safer.”

Just how small and autonomously intelligent drones might become is something that preoccupies Jonathan Ledgard, director of Afrotech at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) research institution in Switzerland. In his more ambitious moments of “future thinking,” he envisions drones the size of goldfinches fluttering about our shoulders, recording, tracking and monitoring aspects of our lives. Like mobile phones it’s a technology that he says might find quick adoption in Africa.

It’s not all a go, however.

Wary regulators have thrown up roadblocks in Kenya (see “Wildlife protection” and “Cargo drones” below) and elsewhere. And Sandvik worries that military manufacturers will exploit the humanitarian sector in order to expand into new markets while giving themselves a benign makeover. “Something I’m really concerned about is the way manufacturers slap the humanitarian usage label on the drones they want to promote,” she says.

Whatever they are used for — whether assassinating people, filming home videos or extreme sports, delivering shopping or alleviating crises — drones are here to stay.

Here are some of the ways drones are making a difference for the better.

1. Wildlife protection

More aggressive-minded animal activists might like the idea of Hellfire-armed Predator drones hunting elephant and rhino poachers, but that’s not what wildlife protection drones are about.

At Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a private nature reserve in Kenya, 6 1/2 feet-wide fixed-wing drones have been tested for tracking animal movements. They are, says Rob Breare, chief commercial officer at Ol Pejeta, “aerial rangers.”

Locating a single poaching incident in a 90,000 acre reserve like Ol Pejeta is looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. So instead, the drones’ greatest application may be in increasing the efficiency of routine conservation exercises like censuses, or to help direct tourists to less busy parts of the park, thus freeing up armed rangers on the ground to do more of the dangerous work of fending off poachers.

Kenyan authorities have erected regulatory barriers, but as Meier points out: “When innovation overtakes regulation, regulatory bodies over-compensate.” Other countries, such as Namibia and India are embracing the possibilities that drones offer for protecting their wildlife.

Continue Reading at GlobalPost.com…