With all the traction that drones are getting right now, it’s inevitable that people will start finding new practical ways to use them. And even though we try to stay ahead of the curve and think of everything possible use, before any one else , so that we can integrate it into our SDK, there will always be people imagining things which we never could. We feel that these people deserve to be mentioned on the Flyver blog, because they can serve as inspiration for our developers more than any one else . We present the top 5 practical applications for drones of the week.

1. The Drone That Can Drop A Turkey Into a Fryer

While not quite the most practical of uses, this drone simply had to be mentioned as a celebration of this week’s Thanksgiving. Dropping a turkey into the fryer can be a bit tricky. With all the oil spills a fire is almost as much of a Thanksgiving tradition as the turkey its self. To solve the problem, the guys at Intelligent UAS put their heads together and whet they came up with is the turkey drone. It is basically a DJI s1000+ modified with a string to which the turkey can be attached. Using the camera as precision control, the crew managed to steer the drone over a fryer and drop the turkey right in the pan, allowing nobody to come to harm in the process. Provided you have an octocopter and a turkey laying around next year, you could technically do the same, however as the video warns, the project was performed by professionals in a secure location and should not be attempted at home.

Source: Youtube

2. Drones Providing Syrian Refugees With Supplies

On a more serious note, we have a drone application this week which makes us proud to be part of the UAV market and gives us hope that the world can actually embrace drones as tools for good in the future. For many people the first association that comes to mind when they hear the term drone or UAV is military applications. The ethical implications of using drones to wage war are huge and have been a source of heated debate for many years, causing drones to have a negative image in the public eye. The Syria Airlift Project is the exact opposite. It is a project which strives to provide relief for refugees from the Syrian war using drones. One of the main problems for the refugees is the lack of access to food and water. By airlifting supplies, the project is improving the lives of refugees every day and changing the public perception of drones as tools of destruction. Only when we manage to overcome such prejudice can we truly embrace drones and harness their potential for improving the life of humanity. It is thanks to organisations like the Syria Airlift project that we are getting closer and closer to that goal every day.

Source: Youtube

4. Helping Children With Autism Develop Social Skills

The Flyver team is so passionate about drones because we believe they can vastly improve human lives. In developing the SDK, our first question in taking every decision is “Will this make the drone more practically useful”. Projects like TATTS (“Taking Autism To The Sky”) are proof that the opportunities for helping people with drones are endless. You just have to get creative. TATTS is a non-profit organisation which uses drones as a tool to help people on the whole spectrum of autism develop their social and employability skills, so that they can function as independent members of society. The way the organisation achieves this is by organising events during which people with autism are taught how to use drones not only for recreational purposes, but also to create value in the form of things like georeferenced imagery or footage of certain events. The other aspect is the social one. When all these people with a common interest gather in a comfortable environment it helps learn to communicate and socialise more naturally. To see the creations of TATTS, just visit the source link below.

Source: TATTS

4. Helping Disabled People Experience The Outside World

As a quadriplegic, Stuart Turner normally has a hard time doing most activities connected with the outside world. Now, however, thanks to a joint project between him and Rhode Island’s Brown University, Stuart is getting to see more and more of the outside world without ever leaving his bedroom. Using Google Glass and a camera-equipped drone, the team has developed a rig which allows Stuart to control the drone using only the motion of his head. Right now stuart says that great heights and great speed can’t be achieved using the rig as it would require far too precise motions of the head, however as drone programming tools, such as our own Flyver SDK develop, we will undoubtedly see advancements in the project.

Source: The Guardian

5. Capturing The Aftermath of Natural Disasters



Seeing footage like this never makes us happy. Over the course of last weekend, northern Italy experienced floods which left large regions in complete disarray. Normally, estimating the damage done by such natural disasters is a difficult task because flood areas are hard to access and they pose a risk for anyone who tries to personally inspect them. With the development of drones, however, natural disaster sites can be inspected remotely with no danger of anyone getting hurt, as this video of the floods near Lake Orta shows.

Source: The Telegraph