Blockchains in combination with drones

The drone industry has been slowly growing for the past few years, as it becomes more of a risk to aeroplanes. Some find drones inconvenient and dangerous like the incident earlier this year with the planes flying into the Newark Liberty International Airport causing flights to halt after pilots reported a drone was flying near the airport.

There was also reports back in December about a drone that hit a Boeing 737 that was landing in Tijuana, Mexico. This actually caused a lot of damage to communications equipments and punching a hole into the outer layer of the airplane’s nose.

According to data coming from the Federal Aviation Administration, many pilots are seeing drones often which indicates that this industry is rapidly growing.

Drones do not usually show up on a planes radar and they are hard to track. The only thing that can limit a drone is it’s own battery range power.

Red cat is a company that is focused on making airspaces secure from drones globally for the growing drone industry. The company is doing this by creating black boxes for drones that will track essential data, like delivering packages and flight path ways using the Blockchain technology.

The company has recently made an announcement about the introduction of its second beta of the drone data platform which will be used to store flight data on the Blockchain. The Data is currently being tested on both GoChain and the EOS blockchain platforms.

Companies moving data on the Blockchain

The black box will record important data such as flight data, as well as communications coming from the plane’s cockpit.

This kind of data helps to investigate if a plane goes down in order to determine what happened. However, further development still needs to be carried out in the drone industry.

According to the CEO and founder of Red Cat, Jeff Thompson:

“We can give you every bit of information about how your drone was performing on that entire flight, not only just for if you crash, but also information such as why this drone uses more battery than this drone, even though they’re almost identical.”

The insurance market around the drone industry is set to be worth more than $500 million in the U.S and $1 billion globally by 2020, according to statics coming from the Allianz group.

The implementation of the Blockchain technology will ensure better performances of drones like how it performs, flight paths, ownership and cryptocurrency transactions between drones or humans.

Amazon has is also expanding its fleets for the implementation of drones for package deliveries by utilising the Blockchain technology. According to Red Cat, it can document data which will ensure companies to rely on accurate information without the need for a trusted centralised authority.

The company will use ADS-B transponders, which all planes are equipped with in order to prevent drones from flying into aeroplanes.

Brian Larkin, which is the Red Cat’s CTO stated that:

“The transponders give us the ability to put drones on the radar screens inside of the cockpits of all aircrafts and create what we call drone shields”

Drones will continue to grow in numbers, which makes this industry a great combination with the Blockchain industry through the creation of smart contracts which can be programmed to a drone, with reliable data management.

If you are planning to own a drone, you can be assured that your data is trusted utilising the Blockchain technology.

Do you have any thoughts on the development of the blockchain technology with drones? Feel free to leave a comment down below.