Drones have become an integral part of our lives and will continue to be in the future. With the advent of technology, innovative ways of using drones have come into picture.
They have changed the process of doing any task and have made the operations more efficient which in turn has decreased the workload and production costs whilst improving accuracy. For example, Facebook to provide internet connection to remote areas by implementing drones. Also corporations like Google and Amazon are testing ways on how they can deliver packages with the help of drones.
Apart from that, many organizations are now looking to capitalize on using drones which would solve the purpose of doing a particular task. From a hobby to military application, here are 4 key ways of using drones which can revolutionize the future of aerospace industry:
Personal Transportation
Although we can say that drones can be defined as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), companies are working on designing autonomous transportation system which will function similar to drones.
In layman language, they can be named as the 'Flying cars'. In May 2019, CityAirbus of "Airbus", a full-scale demonstrator conducted its first take-off which is capable of carrying 4 passengers and cruising at a speed of 120 Km/hr on fixed routes with up to 15 minutes of autonomy.
Its technology of being fully electric and battery powered makes it eco-friendly and the noise from it is almost negligible.
Apart from that companies like Uber, Rolls-Royce and Boeing are working to develop their own autonomous drone vehicles which could serve to ferry the passengers around.
The day is not far when autonomous drone-like taxis will become a norm and carry out the process of commuting in the air in a sustained manner.
Airlines
Every time an airplane lands at an airport, it must undergo routine checks and maintenance should be performed in order to keep the aircraft fly-worthy. There have been instances where delay happens when the maintenance unit takes too long to perform necessary checks.
This ultimately incurs cost to the airline because longer the airplane stays on ground, the parking fees keeps on rising.
In order to reduce the inspection time, drones are the viable solution. Drones outfitted with laser technology and high resolution imagery can be used to inspect the exteriors of an airplane and flag out any potential issue which then would be analysed by the maintenance unit.
This way the overall time of inspection will get reduced by a considerable amount owing to more profits for the airline.
In addition to that an inspection of the entire airport can also be done. Canard-drones is one such startup company looking to implement this.
Space
As we know, drones have already conquered Earth, and in no time they will be sent to outer space for various interplanetary missions. NASA has already announced that they will launch a life-hunting rotor-craft named Dragonfly to Saturn's moon Titan in 2026.
The rotor-craft will be expected to land on Titan in 2034 if everything goes according to plan. This would enable the human civilization to gather huge amount of data and taking numerous pictures of the exotic landscape of Titan.
Before this, NASA intends to accompany a tiny helicopter in the 2020 Mars Rover mission expected to land in 2021 which would aid to gather data about the Red Planet and search for any signs of life.
This would allow us to get a more detailed knowledge about two very different landscapes and perhaps many more in the future. Nevertheless, drones will allow us to go deep into research regarding space exploration.
Internet
As mentioned earlier, Facebook experimented with a solar powered drone called Aquila, which aimed to provide internet access to remote areas. Although Facebook in mid 2018 stopped building their own drones, they intended to depend on other companies to build aircraft.
Apart from that Google sister company X's Project Loon aimed to use large hot air balloons to provide internet access to rural areas.
Similar to Project Loon, there are plans of developing drones that will operate in the stratosphere acting as a "floating-cell tower" which aims to provide access to internet for people in remote areas.
It can also be possible that these drones can act as hot-spots providing internet access to passengers flying.
Although this technology comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, this would surely allow the whole world to remain connected to each other if implemented properly.
Conclusion
It is imminent that by using drones for personal transportation, inspection of aircraft and airports, space exploration and providing internet the aerospace industry will revolutionize.
Reason being, these are sectors where-in there is a huge scope for developing and improving the methods and processes and with drones it will be a stepping stone in such sectors.
How do you think can drones revolutionize the aerospace industry in future? Would love to know from you in the comments!
They have changed the process of doing any task and have made the operations more efficient which in turn has decreased the workload and production costs whilst improving accuracy. For example, Facebook to provide internet connection to remote areas by implementing drones. Also corporations like Google and Amazon are testing ways on how they can deliver packages with the help of drones.
Apart from that, many organizations are now looking to capitalize on using drones which would solve the purpose of doing a particular task. From a hobby to military application, here are 4 key ways of using drones which can revolutionize the future of aerospace industry:
Personal Transportation
Although we can say that drones can be defined as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), companies are working on designing autonomous transportation system which will function similar to drones.
In layman language, they can be named as the 'Flying cars'. In May 2019, CityAirbus of "Airbus", a full-scale demonstrator conducted its first take-off which is capable of carrying 4 passengers and cruising at a speed of 120 Km/hr on fixed routes with up to 15 minutes of autonomy.
Its technology of being fully electric and battery powered makes it eco-friendly and the noise from it is almost negligible.
Apart from that companies like Uber, Rolls-Royce and Boeing are working to develop their own autonomous drone vehicles which could serve to ferry the passengers around.
The day is not far when autonomous drone-like taxis will become a norm and carry out the process of commuting in the air in a sustained manner.
Airlines
Every time an airplane lands at an airport, it must undergo routine checks and maintenance should be performed in order to keep the aircraft fly-worthy. There have been instances where delay happens when the maintenance unit takes too long to perform necessary checks.
This ultimately incurs cost to the airline because longer the airplane stays on ground, the parking fees keeps on rising.
In order to reduce the inspection time, drones are the viable solution. Drones outfitted with laser technology and high resolution imagery can be used to inspect the exteriors of an airplane and flag out any potential issue which then would be analysed by the maintenance unit.
This way the overall time of inspection will get reduced by a considerable amount owing to more profits for the airline.
In addition to that an inspection of the entire airport can also be done. Canard-drones is one such startup company looking to implement this.
Space
As we know, drones have already conquered Earth, and in no time they will be sent to outer space for various interplanetary missions. NASA has already announced that they will launch a life-hunting rotor-craft named Dragonfly to Saturn's moon Titan in 2026.
The rotor-craft will be expected to land on Titan in 2034 if everything goes according to plan. This would enable the human civilization to gather huge amount of data and taking numerous pictures of the exotic landscape of Titan.
Before this, NASA intends to accompany a tiny helicopter in the 2020 Mars Rover mission expected to land in 2021 which would aid to gather data about the Red Planet and search for any signs of life.
This would allow us to get a more detailed knowledge about two very different landscapes and perhaps many more in the future. Nevertheless, drones will allow us to go deep into research regarding space exploration.
Internet
As mentioned earlier, Facebook experimented with a solar powered drone called Aquila, which aimed to provide internet access to remote areas. Although Facebook in mid 2018 stopped building their own drones, they intended to depend on other companies to build aircraft.
Apart from that Google sister company X's Project Loon aimed to use large hot air balloons to provide internet access to rural areas.
Similar to Project Loon, there are plans of developing drones that will operate in the stratosphere acting as a "floating-cell tower" which aims to provide access to internet for people in remote areas.
It can also be possible that these drones can act as hot-spots providing internet access to passengers flying.
Although this technology comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, this would surely allow the whole world to remain connected to each other if implemented properly.
Conclusion
It is imminent that by using drones for personal transportation, inspection of aircraft and airports, space exploration and providing internet the aerospace industry will revolutionize.
Reason being, these are sectors where-in there is a huge scope for developing and improving the methods and processes and with drones it will be a stepping stone in such sectors.
How do you think can drones revolutionize the aerospace industry in future? Would love to know from you in the comments!
You spoke about drone taxis being implented by companies like uber in the near future,considering that these are electrically driven and don't reach high altitudes such as aircrafts ,won't there be a weather specific problem as when if it is really hot the density drops and lifting capacity of a vehicle changes and if it's very cold Electric capacity drops,also other problems like theft can also happen very commonly as these drones would require a rather open space to drop the package like a drive way or compound from where you can easily pick the packet up without getting noticed,so it increases chances of theft,lastly considering a country like India where there are a lot of power lines throught the pand won't these cause obstructions considering the drone will be programmed and not controlled by a man behind a desk?
ReplyDelete-Ali
Hi Ali! Good to hear about the issues which needs to be tackled. Its true that there will be numerous loopholes which have to be catered to for example the likelihood of theft of any delivered package. In that aspect a solution can be to notify the person in advance that his/her package will be delivered at say 10A.M at a specific location.
DeleteIn my opinion as far as India is concerned, the drone taxis are still very far from reality as you rightly said about numerous power lines causing obstructions.
And as far as weather problems are considered, they won't be an issue reason being they won't fly too high, the density changes are thus not significant so efficiency won't be compromised.
I hope I was able to answer your query.