
Flying robots: nature inspires next generation design - T-A
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27496737
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derwiki
Commercial drones are maturing incredibly fast already. The DJI Phantom II
Vision has amazing capabilities for under a grand already. But it still seems
to be only research/hobby interest in drones (or dronies). What's the "killer
app" for drones going to be?

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consideranon
Land surveying.

Maybe a farmer uses them to monitor the state of his crops and even spot treat
unhealthy areas without installing a huge static sensor network.

Could also be used for intrusion detection on a large property. A small group
of drones could detect and instantly let you know when somebody trespasses on
your land. Again, without installing static cameras/sensors.

Search and rescue could be made more effective.

Package delivery.

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fit2rule
I'm currently consulting on a project which, if all goes well, involves
putting a fleet of drones in a box and having them go detect methane gas in
certain high-methane-gas regions of the world..

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votingprawn
Can you share any more on this project?

We're currently working on a project for an environment agency to determine
viability / produce a proof of concept for monitoring methane levels over
landfills using UAVs.

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fit2rule
I can't really say much more than that its in the planning stages, and the
software challenge I'm going to solve is principally dealing with fleet
management .. 'drone is low power, return to base', 'replacement 2-of-3',
&etc. The hardware guys have all the fun challenges: field-
buildable/replaceable parts, autodocks for charging, etc. I'm just making a
pizza app, basically. ;)

