Drones for good

There haven’t been many companies that have embodied the concept of “drones for good” as compellingly as medical delivery specialist Zipline. Yet despite being one of the brightest stars in global UAV activity, the company is again offering a reminder of why it succeeds: It forgets about the drones, and focuses on the service.

Pigeons don’t often inspire demonstrations of concern and care from city dwellers, many of whom tend to revile the ubiquitous scavengers as “rats with wings.” But one of the birds became the object of much attention – and the star of a drone video – when a Peruvian neighborhood went to work to save the pigeon after it had gotten itself into a seemingly hopeless fix.

Australian software as a service company Advanced Navigation has developed a multi-user platform providing remote connection to, monitoring, and navigation of a single drone or swarms of over 1,000 vehicles using a simple phone app or web browser.

The Welsh coppers at the sticks have really hit the, er, air soaring. The recently formed North Wales Police drone unit has racked up a series of successful operations that has earned them plaudits from the region’s top law enforcement official as “high-flying heroes.” 

Here is a tale of drones for good, wrapped inside a wider effort to protect and preserve some of the world’s most endangered plants. Over the summer, botanist and drone pilot Ben Nyberg flew his craft while surveying flora in otherwise inaccessible locations on Kaua‘i, and discovered a species thought to have been wiped out apart from a single spot far across the island. Now he’s looking to expand use of drones from not only discovering the hidden survivors of threatened plants like those, but also in harvesting their seeds to ensure they’ll never die off.

The African Drone and Data Academy (ADDA) has won the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International’s humanitarian and public safety award. In less than two years, the Malawi-based ADDA has produced 300 graduates from across Africa to pursue a variety of careers in business and public service based on drone tech.

WeRobotics, a not-for-profit that is democratizing drone technology through its brilliant Flying Labs network, is launching a new children’s picture book series to introduce kids to real-world examples of “drones for good.”

The buzz being heard over California’s Orange County these days is not necessarily coming from new generations of mosquitoes that are often a problem this time of year, but rather drones flying missions to decrease their numbers.

It may not be as spectacular as an emergency rescue or as glittery as a light show, but it’s the kind of action in the sky that the world will be seeing more frequently. Last week, authorities in Phoenix flew a drone to locate a major gas leak, and used video from the craft to collect information on the fastest and safest way to repair the potentially explosive breach.

It’s common knowledge that fires are now a recurring and increasingly frequent calamity in many states and countries around the world – California being particularly vulnerable. Mindful of that, a San Francisco startup is attracting customers and investors alike with its drone- and tech-based service to map homes as the first step in maximizing their protection from wildfires.

To anyone who has ever loved and temporarily lost a pet, this tale will qualify for vaunted “drones for good” status. Nine excruciating days after a newlywed couple’s puppy disappeared along the coast of Cornwall in the UK, a group of helpful, hopeful drone pilots flying a volunteer search mission found the lost dog, just as their last battery was about to give out.

Drones, as you are likely aware, are tremendously useful in the world of Search and Rescue. There have been literally hundreds of cases reported globally, which DJI tracks here, where drones played a role in getting a human being out of a tough spot. Sadly, this story does not have a happy ending — but it’s still important: A drone deployed in the S&R efforts found the body of a missing tourist in Slovakia.

A leading US air medical service provider – think helicopter transport of patients between hospitals or directly from the scene of an incident – has announced ambitious plans to enter the uncrewed space. Air Methods will partner with Wingcopter on a drone health delivery solution it calls “Spright.” A news release says the new network will serve the entire United States, using fleets of Wingcopter drones.

It’s a troubling time on this planet. We’ve seen continued wildfires in western North America and massive flooding in parts of Germany and Belgium. In the latest cataclysm, a region of China was hit with a year’s worth of rain in just three days. And drone videos help give us a better sense of the scale of the flood damage.

People are still recovering — and will be for some time — following last week’s catastrophic weather event that hammered Germany, Belgium, and some other locations. Now, a new FPV drone video shot in Belgium reveals that some people endured a double-disaster: Flooding and fire. And the pilot was able to assist firefighters gain better situational awareness on two house fires.

You know that saying: Everyone’s talking about the weather? Well, these days people really are talking about the weather, but in much more urgent tones. There’s also another saying: A picture is worth a thousand words. And in this case, drone photos showing the results of what many scientists believe is climate change in California are shocking.

A home-grown drone services company has considerably accelerated New Zealand’s drive to plant a billion trees by 2028 through aerial drops of so-called “seed bombs.”

Drones are set to fly new missions over Pacific atolls, aiming to replicate their coup in the Galápagos archipelago earlier this year by eradicating invasive rats endangering the survival of indigenous wildlife. Topping that list of creatures the flights seek to protect are majestic green sea turtles, whose nests are raided by the voracious rodents.

As an initiative, it qualifies as “doing good for drones for good.” Tech, cloud, and solutions provider Aquiline Drones is offering its uncrewed aerial system (UAS) commercial training and education program free of charge to first responders across the US in gratitude for the work they do on everyone’s behalf.

The foundation established by famous naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell – whose books on his eccentric English family inspired the smash series The Durrells in Corfu – has turned to drones in its efforts to protect endangered animals around the world. The most recent example of that finds The Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust deploying the craft in Madagascar to prevent poaching of a rare species of lemur.

A leading Kenyan non-governmental organization has teamed up with a group that uses drone and robotics for public benefit in a reforestation effort to turn back one region’s steady environmental decline. Their goal: prepare and plant indigenous trees that have vanished across 2,250 acres of decimated countryside.