Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or popularly named drones, are nowadays used not only by photography enthusiasts and civilians with hobbies but used more and more by the government, the military, the private sector, companies big and small.
Small scale drones are swifter, portable and easy to handle and hence have found their way to all industries, big and small, as well. Drones provide an angle different from the normal cameras we use, and with that view and multipurpose view, these drones have penetrated with numerous uses in the market.
Here are ten ways, including different industries, private and public sector making use of these drones:
1. Recreational and other personal use
2. Surveillance and Inspection
3. Delivery
4. Disaster Relief and Management
5. Agriculture
6. Mapping
7. Filmmaking
8. Commercial Videography
9. Security
10. Rescue and Search Operations
10 Best Ways to Use Drones
1. Recreational and other personal use
Drones are used by photo and videography enthusiasts, as well as by newbies in the industry exploring their skillset on drone photography. It finds a purpose in recreational use and can be used to make money from the hobby and skill developed in the artform. There are plenty of ways where one can even earn money with this hobby of theirs. Landscape photography is another domain where you capture landscapes with high resolution cameras on your drones. If you’re passionate about flying, you can be part of recreational clubs or groups, or you can open your own social media webpage and work on it to build your niche profile that describes your passion.
2. Surveillance and Inspection
Drones have found use in surveillance purposes as well. The surveillance is not only restricted to individual monitoring where one keeps track from security or monitoring point of view. These UAVs have proven to be useful surveying tracks and keeping records in different industries; be it a utility industry where the pipeline activity work or construction set up, infrastructure work’s process and progress has to be monitored from a far-off site, inspections of powerlines, tall structures like chimneys, or a farmer who is surveying the livestock movement, surveying activity and movement from a greater angle helps the person operating the machine who is the stakeholder here carrying responsibility of his job.
3. Delivery
The entry of drones in this field is slow and in progress, with not very large scale of its applications. Drones can be used to deliver small sized packages, medicines, parcels, food items from one place to the other. Amazon has been advancing in its quest to inculcate this technology in its sphere.
4. Disaster Relief and Management
There is utter chaos in the area that has been struck with a disaster. With various requirements based on welfare, rescue operations, journalism, coverage, these unmanned vehicles, easily penetrable and operating at greater heights come with advantages over conventional practices.
Helicopters are used to reach the area of disaster to provide relief, food items etc., and are used to capture images, reporting the events. Drones here can be used to provide real-time pictures and recordings of the disaster struck area, being small and concise, it can provide the exact images and help surveyors with information on the debris situation in areas where the helicopters cannot penetrate. It can be useful in providing relief items and other valuable resources, transporting them to the area required, not utilizing extra manpower for the task.
5. Agriculture
Large scale farmers have reported significant crop improvement with the use of drones in agricultural practices. Crop performance on indicators of health, yields, production and growth has shown positive results overtime. Drones instilled with technology such as infrared video capture for specific wavelengths, capture contrasting colors of the crops which indicates their health. This in turn is useful for the farmer to identify the problem, analyze the root cause and take actions to cure and retrieval.
6. Mapping
Drones, with their characteristic of reaching places where humans cannot very easily have proven useful for government agencies working on geographic mapping, be it for archaeological sites, mining, forest industry, or topography and landscape mapping.
These helps discover difficult areas like troubled coastlines, mountain tops, isolated islands etc. and map them geographically. If you are a skilled drone operator, there is lot of time and energy that needs to be invested to map the areas and to gather quality information from these sites.
7. Filmmaking
It is not always fitting for the film crew to take all the props, cameras, dollies, cranes and helicopters, adjusting all resources to get the perfect camera shot for the motion picture and with the invention of these unmanned vehicles, it is more than convenient to set the camera on the drone, and go about with the angle for the perfect scene shot.
8. Commercial Videography
The cameras fitted to the drones and the rotators in action are an asset to the videography recordings that comes with it. Nowadays, commercial videography includes the use of drone cameras for their project. Be it national matches, international stadium tours, sports, television, music events or something as huge as the Commonwealth Games, drones are being used.
Smarthonk has put together a list of top drones that are best for drone photography/videography.
9. Security
Instead of recruiting six to seven men for a difficult, large security area, it is a technological advancement to deploy a skilled drone camera operator with the drone surveying the site, covering a larger area and timely monitoring for unwanted thefts, document lifts or site trespassing.
10. Rescue and Search Operations
Putting this in simple terms, ‘placing drones where humans cannot’. With the race against time in situations as critical as rescue or search operations, these unmanned aerial vehicles capture footage of objects to be identified from heights and locations a human cannot simply reach. Whether it is a complex land terrain, a dense forest, underground rescue operation, drones with their concise nature, thermal imaging and penetrable characteristics have proven to be of tremendous help to national security teams.
