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Drones in Nature: How UAVs and the Ecosystem Can Help Each Other

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Drones are both a whole lot of fun and a worthwhile investment for a growing number of businesses. As both local business people and international corporations look to drones as delivery vehicles or cinematographic tools (and a lot more), scientists and environmentalists are investigating their potential to improve the natural world. Drone designers and manufacturers are, in turn, looking to the natural world for improvements to drones. Whether it means a more efficient drone motor or more versatile drone rotors, nature might be where the next advancements are found. Here are a few examples.   Drones Helping Bees Plant life on Earth, wild and cultivated, is incredibly important. Virtually all wild plants and a considerable percentage of the world’s cultivated crops require cross-pollination from insects, bats, and birds to survive. Among the most important and active of the pollinators are bees. Unfortunately, and alarmingly, bees have been suffering considerably from Colony Col
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How Drones Are Carrying Out Dangerous Scientific Tasks So People Don’t Have To

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Drones have been increasingly contributing to in-the-field science in an impressively diverse number of areas. They’ve been used to track animal movements and count populations, survey landscape human beings can’t reach, spot disease patterns in forests and orchards, collect samples from a whole range of environments, and dozens of other applications. One of the most practical features of drones contributing to science is the ability of drone motors and drone propellers to carry cameras and sensors places human beings can’t go. In essence, drones are now carrying out dangerous scientific tasks so people like scientists don’t have to. Here are a few ways drones are contributing in the field.  Flying Into Radiation The failure of and explosion in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 is one of the most infamous human-made disasters in history. Radiation levels in the area surrounding the former power plant are still considered too high for human habitation. That
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The Present and Future of Passenger Drones

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It’s a rare baby boomer, member of Generation X, or millennial who hasn’t day dreamed of a utopian future in which we zip through the air over a futuristic metropolis, finally docking in our smart home, or hovering pod, in a flying car. Science fiction has been promising us flying cars virtually since science fiction has existed. That fictional dream is actually becoming increasingly representative of reality with the introduction of passenger drones. Also known as “people-moving” and “people-carrying” drones (or “gyrocopters”), passenger drones, employing traditional but scaled-up drone propellers and motors, have already completed hundreds of test flights and have carried people. So, what are the possible applications of passenger drones and how close are they to becoming a reality the average person (or, as it looks right now, person with an above-average amount of money) can take advantage of?  The Future of Passenger Transport? There are some obvious hurdle
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The Four Big Drone Propeller Considerations When Buying New UAV Props

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As the popularity of drones and the piloting of them as a hobby, and for commercial purposes, continues to grow, pilots and operators are increasingly looking for ways to increase the power, efficiency, speed, height, and general performance of their drones. One of the most common ways in which pilots and operators hope to enhance their unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is by upgrading their drone propellers . It’s a sound strategy as a prop upgrade can improve a drone’s performance, particularly if a pilot is still using the plastic propellers that so often come with new drones. Following are four of the most important considerations drone operators should keep in mind when buying new propellers. Length of the Propellers There’s assumption that can accompany the performance of drone propellers: bigger is necessarily better. Not so. Longer propellers move more air and therefore create more lift, but that’s not always what’s best for a drone’s performance depending on
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How Drones Are Empowering Citizen Scientists

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That science is best left to the professionals and experts has been the conventional wisdom for decades, if not centuries. This is changing, however, thanks to some scientists, a whole lot of drone propellers , and groups of committed citizen scientists. Thanks to drones, people without scientific training can now contribute to scientific research in a number of fascinating capacities. Those contributions, however, aren’t without some unique challenges.  The Contributions For the sake of transparency, it’s worth noting that this is not the first time that scientists have employed citizen scientists, and the information they gather, as important contributors to our collective scientific understanding. In fact, this has been taking place well before drones ever existed. Two good examples are involvement in the Cooperative Weather Service, which began in 1890, and the Christmas Bird Count, which started in 1900.Interestingly, drone-assisted research today is in simil
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The Many Ways Drones Are Becoming Invaluable for Scientific Research

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Anyone familiar with drones is no doubt aware of their military use and their burgeoning popularity among hobbyist unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots. While most are likely aware that they’re increasingly employed for commercial applications as well (cinematography, delivery, agriculture, etc.). However, less well-known is that drones are becoming an increasingly invaluable asset to scientific research. That value is proving to be an impressively prolific one, too. In fact, drones are being taken advantage of by biologists (micro, marine, terrestrial, etc.), climatologists, geologists, ecologists, volcanologists, and meteorologists—so scientists in pretty much every branch of natural and life science are benefitting from the use of UAVs. Drones are demonstrating an ability to reach places with more agility, easier access, and (extremely important for virtually all scientific studies), far lower cost than other research media are capable. The following is a record o
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Tips for Cleaning and Maintaining Your Drone and Its Propellers

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The popularity of piloting unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), drones, is growing increasingly popular for commercial, artistic, and exploratory purposes, and for the enjoyment of amateur hobbyists. As is the case with so many other pieces of mechanical equipment, the more devoted you are to the care and maintenance of your drone, the more consistently, efficiently, and dependably it will operate for you.   For the most part, the maintenance of a drone is pretty basic. They should be given a pre-flight check before use and a post-flight cleaning and examination. Doing so generally doesn’t take all that much time but proves to be an excellent investment of time. The following is an overview of basic drone cleaning and maintenance tips that don’t require any specialized technical knowledge of the drone motor or its function, but will keep your drone in the air longer and performing better when it’s up there. It will also almost certainly save you a good bit of money in
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