Drone On

Fun Facts About Drones

• The world's first true drone was co-developed by Orville Wright for the U.S. Army in 1917–1918. This pilotless biplane used pre-set controls to fly a set distance before dropping its wings to dive bomb targets.
• The name "drone" for unmanned aircraft originated in the 1930s, directly referencing the male honeybee drone. Both make a similar buzzing sound and are equally "mindless."
• Drone delivery is fastly evolving from experimental tests to real-world operations. Companies like Amazon and Walmart are making progress dropping packages directly onto suburban yards and driveways.
• Canada, America, and Australia have been using autonomous drones to reforest fire-damaged areas in their respective countries. Autonomous drones are deployed to shoot nutrient-packed seed pods into the soil, which restores forests up to 10 times faster than manual labor.
• Drones equipped with thermal imaging has revolutioned search-and-rescue operations. Since they can spot human body heat in pitch darkness from the sky, search times are reduced from hours to minutes. It is estimated that over 1,000 lives have been saved with them.
• Modern defense programs are experimenting with coordinated drone swarms that operate using collective intelligence, often modeled on the behavior of bird flocks and schools of fish.
• Most people think of drones as small, capable of fitting in the palm of your hand. But some military drones rival the size of a Boeing 737, with wingspans of over 130 feet.
• Some high-altitude drones used for surveillance, communication and environmental monitoring run on solar power. They can stay airborne for weeks, even months, at a time.