Here’s a another production use of drone technology.
I believe Drones are awesome! It all depends on how people are going to use them. I don’t have one. But I am thinking about getting one.
I believe, and I could be dead wrong, police will start using them to get into drug houses and places they are not able to get with just a body cam. What I mean, is that bodycams do work in some places and they have been successful. But I believe that more as time goes by, it will be a necessity and not a choice. JMO
That planting drone has a challenge… weight and energy. But it’s a great idea. I’m more of the sensor guy type who designs the surveying drone with hyperspectral sensors. Not trivial but easier than the guys that have to figure out how to carry all the seed pods and fire them into the dirt. Wow. That takes lots of fuel or electric energy.
If the prototype works, there’s nothing to keep them from building a much larger, more powerful one. I predict a huge one with a turbine driving a generator and a sophisticated speed control system for the prop drive motors.
With proper dimensions, a heavy payload is attainable.
With enough money and time, anything within the limits of physics and aerodynamics can be built. Electronics and controls are no problem.
Yeah. Then it’s less futuristic and more money driven. Even a few years ago, I was part of a design team for a unmanned helo that came into an area it had not yet seen, surveyed they area for both hostile ground fire and acceptable landing zones, landed, allowed a downed pilot to crawl on-board, and returned home.
Scalability gets to be an issue too. You can pay for one maybe 10. But they are gonna plant a billion trees. Small and affordable drones that you can unleash in the thousands is what is exciting to me.
On the other hand, nature doesn’t fire seeds into the ground, it simply spreads them around.
While it’s not the most efficient means in terms of seed costs, just dropping them by air and letting nature take it’s course is much more efficient in many other ways and has virtually zero negative impact on the environment compared to putting human work crews on the ground.
They might get to that. Just spread a shower of seeds. But the idea of pods with water and nutrients has merit too. Maybe they will come up with a hybrid. Or how about a drone with a planting stick… a hollow tube that pokes into the ground and then you just drop the pod in. Om thinking that would be a more efficient use of energy. The shooting pod projectile approach just seems efficient. But I’m not doing any calculations. I’m just sitting in my SO’s garage on a nice day preparing to do some work. so I really dont know.
Or maybe a team… a flying drone and a ground roving drone. Or a flying/rover.
Or 100, 000 unemployed people.
When you get to that much weight I think you’d simply be much better off using a terrestrial drone on tracks rather than an airborne drone.
Hell we have GPS based lawnmowers now and intelligent drone vacuum cleaners and we’ve been working on semi sentient independent terrestrial drones for the military so the tech already clearly exists.
The problem is, anything with wheels or tracks carrying significant weight can have a detrimental effect on the terrain where the natural cover has been disturbed through things like logging or destroyed by fire so they can potentially do more harm than good.
There are some models out there now that actually walk on four to six or more legs mimicking horses, dogs, and insects but due to their complexity they are cost prohibitive.
Of course, if you can get a gov’t contract to do the work and pay off enough politicians or get the Sierra Club behind you costs become irrelevant due to the never ending pool of gov’t funding for such projects that you can tap into.
Interesting concept.
I like they also speak to loss of jobs/economic impact as a result of deforestation.
It’s good to see people making an effort to use technology like this in positive ways.
I believe that if people use it in a positive way, it carries many benefits. If one abuses Technology, they are primarily using it for strictly for their advantage - without no regard.
So in short, it all depends on who you put it in the hands of.
I’m sure this company is being well funded and stands to reap nice profits at the end of the day if successful.
I simply like hearing about use in this arena vs. hearing how Amazon wants to use drones to deliver packages faster.
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I think Amazon should use drones to deliver packages faster. I am all for it.
It’s when - for example - Amazon wants to use drones for other purposes other than
delivering packages efficiently, then I have a problem. If they want to use it to “spy” on my house or property for data usage later, that is fringing on my privacy. Especially, when they don’t let me know ahead of time.
There’s no way they won’t be using every bit of data they can gather.