Drones help us to increase yield, plant forests, detect mines and save lives.  

The attraction of investments, improvement of regulatory legislation as well as the development of new technologies led to increase of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) usage. Drones are used in different sphere – from cartography and border monitoring to delivery of humanitarian assistance to hardly accessible locations. Let’s take a closer look at the spheres where drones proved to be very effective.  

Agriculture and forestry are two spheres which derive major benefits from drones applications at all stages of plants’ breeding: 

• Soil analysis: 3-D map created with the help of data collected by drones is a very handy tool for the planning of sowing. After seeds are planted soil analysis will help to draft irrigation and fertilization plans. 
• Planting of forests: system, developed by BioCarbon Engineering, enables to plant a big number of trees faster and more efficiently. The technology provides for usage of drones which shoot capsules with germinated seeds and set of fertilizers directly into the soil. Even though every 4th tree planted this way dies, the technology still allows cutting expenses by 85%.  
• Spraying of plants with chemicals: contemporary technologies enable accurate application of required chemicals while the soil analysis allows determining the precise time of spraying. As a result, you get higher spraying efficiency and a decrease of groundwater contamination by chemicals.
• Yield control: farmers, cultivating large land plots are aware of all difficulties related to permanent seeds monitoring. Satellite monitoring which was used in the past has a number of disadvantages including but not limited to pre-ordering of satellite shots, the dependence of shot quality from weather conditions, short time span for making shots, etc. At the same time, drones provide you with sequences of shots depicting the actual state of plants as well as all available problems with them. 
• Irrigation: drones equipped with multispectral and thermal sensors can precisely identify parts of the field in need of irrigation as well as help to define the vegetation index of plants: the density of sowing, similarities and the size of plants as well as land parcels productivity. 
• Monitoring of plants: multispectral shots enable to detect bacterial and fungoid diseases of plants at very early stages. It allows to prevent diseases’ dissemination and boost the effectiveness of treatment. Furthermore, infrared aerial photography enables vine producers to control the gestation of grapes. 

Drones are already replacing couriers and technical staff of airports   

French aircraft producer Airbus started to use UAVsfor examination of their planes for the presence of cracks, scratches, dents and other damage. It allows not only to increase the quality of planes’ maintenance but to significantly decrease aircraft downtime. The inspection of a plane by drones takes only 10-15 minutes which is several times less than 2 hours required for an ordinary check.  

In Switzerland’s province Lugano, the program of medical analyses’ exchange between hospitals with the help of drones is implemented. This program is supported by the Swiss Post as well as drone manufacturer – Matternet. 70 test launches of drones have already been conducted this year. Next year the exchange of analysis between hospitals with the help of drones will become permanent.    

Over 2 billion people around the world experience the lack of vital medicines due to the residence in hardly accessible locations and problems with infrastructure. Zipis a small drone developed with an application of commercial aircraft technologies was designed to work in such conditions. It can deliver vaccines, medicines, and blood to the most remote locations doing up to 100 km/h.   

Windhorse Aerospace, POUNCER™ UAVs manufacturer, develops partially edible drones. According to the specification, the drone will consist of separable parts, and non-edible elements will be used as fuel. Such drone will have the capacity to transport 50 kg of food, water, and medicines to the locations affected by natural disasters or military conflicts. Controlled landing feature is another benefit of this UAV: dispatched from an aircraft or launched from land, such drone can cover 40 km and achieve its target with 7 meters accuracy, which is crucial for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. 

Drones can save lives by detecting unexploded ordnances (UXO) and mines  

Every day 70 people die or receive injuries because of explosions of land mines. According to the available data, over 1000 years and $30 billion are required to neutralize all existing mines. Currently, British scientists develop a special technology of image processing which allows detecting anomalies of plants development caused by chemicals leaking out of unexploded mines.  

Drones can easily perform tasks which required a lot of resources or were completely impossible. Though, it’s only the beginning, as UAVs technologies become more and more sophisticated and purpose-specific. Thus, it’s quite predictable that in the nearest future drones will play more important and active part in our lives.