The public is used to hearing about drones on the news when it comes to enthusiasts enjoying a fascinating hobby, Amazon threatening to air bomb packages to your door or the deviant users causing ruckus with other air traffic. What about the other implementations where drones can be used for positive results in everyday life? Not just packages being delivered to your door, but other uses that can help relieve the stress or load of certain public services? One example would be emergency response teams.
Students at the Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) have been working on a design that would allow them to develop a network of drones that can respond to emergency situations faster that ground traffic since they have a bird’s eye line of sight for travel (no obstructions) vs city streets and traffic. With the latest achievements on object recognition in all forms of drones under development currently, one could easily see something like this as a possibility. Assuming of course nobody steals the drones while there on the ground of course (our species is just so cruel).
The drones would be able to respond to events such as heart-attack victims, giving the ability to resuscitate them until emergency crews can get there.This would increase a victim’s chance of survival significantly as long as the bystanders around that person are ready and willing (and capable) to listen to instructions.
The students claim they will be able to achieve a speed of over 60mph in flight, allowing the drones to reach their destination quickly. Try getting any land vehicle to pull that off without any obstructions, turns or other unforeseen troubles.
Obviously there would be a lot of things to work out in order to make something like this possible. Like making sure people don’t steal the equipment and sell it on the black drone market (you never know, one may exist). Or making sure it has object recognition. That paramedics on the other end won’t lost connection to the drone at any point despite distance, obstacles or anything else that could interfere. Of course they also have to make sure they can quickly translate their instructions without confusing the people on the receiving end.
One can only hope for a day where things like this become a possibility–as long as the drones don’t rise up against us one day and start sending themselves back in time to end us all (oops, there I go again).
Check out the following video for a more in-depth view of the project, beginning with an acted out scenario where it could be of good use.
