1. Fishing



Imagine you’re sitting in your boat on the lake, casually throwing the fishing rod around, waiting for a fish to take the bait and then suddenly you hear a sound akin to a swarm of bees in close proximity. No, it’s not the revenge of mother nature finally starting, its=’s probably your neighbour using a drone to fish. David Darg from Ryot News attached a string with a hook and bait at the end to a DJI Phantom and then flew it over a lake, until he caught a fish. As we see, the system works quite effectively, but it kind of does away with the idea of fishing being a calm and relaxing hobby.

Source: Youtube

2. An Imperial Speeder Bike Replica



Keeping with the trend of replicating Star Wars vehicles with drones, Youtube user ajw61185 created a replic of an imperial speeder bike using a drone and an old toy he had lying around. The results as always lead to nerdgasms. Maybe this is the new cosplay?

Source: Youtube

3. Protecting Elephants and Rhinos



Project Air Shepherd represents the best of humanity when it comes to using drones. Rhino and elephant poaching in Africa is a huge issue. In fact, at the current rate of poaching, they are projected to go extinct within the next 10 years. So what’s the solution? The Lindbergh Foundation developed project Air Shepherd, a system that uses drones with infrared cameras to track the movement of elephants and rhinos. This information is then sent ot the U.S. where sophisticated software predicts the movement of the animals and keeps the drone on top of them. When poachers are detected, local rangers are notified so they can save the day. During the 600 tests done so far, zero poaching has occurred.

Source: Upworthy

4. Attempting to Deliver Drugs to Prisoners

This is not a particularly positive use, but it’s flat out ridiculous, so we simply had to mention it. What flies, sounds like an angry beehive and has flashing lights on its body? That’s right, a quadcopter. When you tally these things up, the end result is a hard to miss machine. Apparently someone in Bedfordshire didn’t do the math and attempted to smuggle drugs, a phone and weapons inside Bedford Prison using a drone. The device crashed into a wall and got stuck in barbed wire, where it was noticed by the guards. The hope was probably that a prisoner would reach out through his cell and grab the delivery from the drone flying outside the window, but how could anyone not see a drone flying through the yard and standing a certain amount of time in front of someone’s window?

Source: RT

5. Monitor Methane from Fracking



With all the human advances in science, we’re not too far ahead in detecting methane leaks. This process is usually performed by people patrolling the ground and manually looking for leaks. Thanks to Dick Zhang and Identified Technologies that might soon not be the case. The company is developing drones which will monitor oil and gas sites. With autonomous drones flying around these territories and gathering large volumes of data, we may finally have sufficient information to know the true amount of leaks and their effect on the environment.

Source: The Allegheny Front