Table of Contents
Introduction
There is nothing more to tell about drones while we are living in the 21st century. However, drone Technology itself is a multi-billion dollar industry and constantly growing. Some people think drones as a toy for the kids and surprisingly unaware of its jaw-dropping applications in human civilizations.
Especially when Drones are driven by the latest AI technology. AI-driven drones are changing the world in a big way. Drones and Artificial Intelligence are a killer combination to perform certain really complex jobs which is very difficult to perform by humans.
I have written this article for people who want to explore the world of drones and more importantly how Artificial Intelligence-Driven Drones are in use to change the way of life.
What is a Drone ?
A drone is basically an unmanned vehicle or a vehicle driven autonomously. So there is no pilot/driver physically present inside to drive this vehicle. We call them UAV as a short form of Unmanned Areal Vehicles.
How a Drone works ?
A drone has two main parts. One is its own aircraft system which helps to make it fly and second is its Control System which is operated by a human being or third-party tool separately using a Remote Control device.
A good quality drone is generally equipped with its own GPS tracker, wide-angle lenses and infrared, etc. Also there are many other important parts in a Drone e.g
- Front and Back Propellers
- Motors
- Landing Gears
- Flight Controllers
- GPS Tracker
- Antennae
- Battery
- Camera
- Sensors
- Receivers
- Gimbal ( Mounting Device )
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History of Drones :
Let’s dive into the history of drones. How they were evolved?
Early days of Drones
It is considered that the concept of drones was first introduced by Austrians while they were in WAR with Italy in 1849. However, those unmanned areal vehicles were nothing but balloons filled with gas bombs. So in today’s date, those may not fall into the category of perfect ” Drones” but they were the first step into this technology.
In 1915 British Army formed more advanced UAVs, where they were able to take pictures of sky view maps of the German Soldier base.
Eventually, the United States took its first step to create the first UAV in the 1930s. Eventually, US Navy invested their time and money to create Pilot-less UAVs and In 1937 the first commercialized UAV was built-in bulk to use them in the WAR.
Initially, Drones were considered as expensive toys and noting but bad investment but in the 1980s when Israel got significant success over Syria by destroying dozens of their aircraft, these UAVs become more interesting to people.
In the 2000s a new smaller but more complicated version of the drone was introduced by the United States and was deployed in Afganistan to search for Osama Bin Laden.
Recent Evolution of Drones
In 2006 US introduced drones which were important and gained the public’s attention as they were used to monitor and patrol the USA- MEXICO Border to limit illegal immigration and drug trade.
Jeff Bozos from Amazon( CEO & FOUNDER of Amazon ) introduced mini-drones as a carrier to transport packages in 2014.
In today’s date, the usage of Drones has increased exponentially from Military-Base and War-zones to Day-to-day life activities. Drone technology is a 20 billion dollar industry. Small, Medium and Big Companies are using these autonomous Unmanned Robots to perform a complex human task in a much shorter time.
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Especially Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have made a significant impact on the drone industry and It increases the scope for drones so much that they are solving a number of real-time complex problems that humans were unable to solve earlier easily.
So, I have discussed their applications driven by AI & Neural Network, later in this article.
Types of Drones
We can categorize drones mainly based on their internal structure and purpose of usage.
A. Based on its internal Structure
Single Rotor Drone
Single Rotor Drones are the most basic types of drones with only one rotating blade and their costs vary between 25,000 USD to 300,000 USD.
These drones are a good choice when you want to go for longer flight times. But they are not very stable and less secure when compared to multi-rotor Drones.
Multi Rotor Drone
Multi-Rotor drones have more than one rotating blade positioned in several positions and their prices vary from 5,000 USD to 65,000 USD.
These drones comparatively carry lesser weight. However, they are more stable while hovering over a wide area because of the multi rotating blades rather than single rotor drones.
Fixed Wing Drones
Fixed-wing Drones look like old-time air-planes as their structure is kind of fixed and there is an electric motor driven propeller or engine inside which helps to fly.
Companies use Fixed-wing drones for distributing foods in the area hit by a flood or to spread chemicals over a farm ground etc.
It has the capacity to cover large areas and better endurance with first flight speed. Their prices vary from $25 – $120k
Fixed Wing Hybrid Drones
These types of drones are the combination of Fixed Wing and Rotor drones. Generally, two rotors are placed at the back.
The design is kind of similar to the designs of the aircraft of very old times. Their commercial availability is very less but they are still in the research & development phase. Basically, they are not very good at either flying or hovering purposes.
B. Based on their Purpose of usage
Recreational purpose
There are a variety of drones falls into the category of Recreational drones. Mostly the toy drones which are available in the market are for recreational purpose. The mini drones for kids have price ranging between $30 – $300.
There are some recreational drones that have a high-quality camera attached. These are good for professional video makers or you-tubers or travel bloggers/ vloggers who need an areal view. These drones are also called Prosumer drones and they are consumer drones. Basically, Professionals use them and their price varies between $500 – $2000.
The third category of drones is FPV Racing drones. Professional racers use these drones for highspeed flying as a recreation. These are programmable drones and the software offers a 3D racing track through its VR system. This is a pretty new thing in the drone as well and the gaming industry and getting lots of attention.
Commercial Purpose
Professional drone pilots use these types of drones for commercial use e.g.Taking an areal view for a construction zone for a construction company.
The price varies from $300 – $25000 and sometimes recreational drones are good alternatives for commercial work also.
Other drones
Some other drones are there e.g.
- Small drones
- Microdrones
- Tactical Drones
- Reconnaissance drones
- Photography drones
- Combat Drones
- GPS Drones
Impact of AI in Drone industry
Artificial Intelligence plays a very important role to enhance the performance of drones in the modern world. Basically, A special segment in AI known as Computer Vision is the key technology that helps to identify objects using digital image processing techniques and group them into different categories.
The combination of digital Image processing and drone neural network is used to do Object recognition, classification, and tracking and this can help to identify objects like houses, cars, trees, walls, and also sometimes it can identify living animals like humans, cows, whales, etc using its neural network algorithm.
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When the drone is flying on its way and an object comes along, it records images by its camera and sensors. Then it extracts the feature of the images to get meaningful information using its neural network and image processing techniques to identify what type of object it is.
Modern-day drones have the technical support with Machine Learning and Deep learning technologies that help to identify an object while flying and helps the drones to avoid possible collisions on the way.
AI-enabled drones perform two main actions.
Object Detection & Avoid Collisions
As i already mentioned above, AI-driven drones are able to identify objects on the fly using computer vision, image processing and neural network techniques and avoid possible collisions.
GPS Tracking / Self navigation
From the GPS co-ordinates given to the drones, they can calculate the track from source to destination and the time it will take to reach there.
So more image data-set fed to the AI system, more improved the drones will be to identify the objects and to automatically avoid collisions and find its way to the destination.
Applications of AI-driven drones
Drones in Smart cities
Smart cities are a futuristic concept where we can have a much better life with most of the things that will be automated including medical system, traffic monitor, etc with the help of UAVs and many other technologies in parallel.
Scientists can use drones to build our future smart cities so they can play key roles supporting a variety of applications such as medical, package delivery, traffic monitoring, etc.
Drones in Emergency situations
We can use drones as life-savers for places where people are in emergency situations such as Flood, hurricanes, fire, or violence in public places.
Sometimes Drones are very useful to distribute foods and other important things to the people who really need them at times of natural calamity.
Drones in Farming
AI-Enabled Drones hovering over the farming field can identify the crops which are infected or what is the best time to sow or even how much fertilizers to put. Also, the whole process is less time consuming as compared to if farmers apply their real-life experience to make such decisions.
Construction Sites
Drones are very effective hoovering over the construction sites and gathering images by scanning and mapping the terrains using its birds-eye view wide-angle camera lenses form a certain height. Generally, this work takes a couple of days by humans to accomplish but drones can do in 10 -15 minutes.
Military and Defense
AI-driven drones are already in use for a US-Pentagon Border Security project to identify if someone is entering the US-MEXICO border illegally without proper documentation or work authorization.
They are constantly in use to patrol the border and monitor illegal entry. The Military and defense department use these drones to transport weapons, supplies, medicines, etc.
I have recently read a very important article about a project by Palmer Lucky who sold Oculus to Facebook for a little over 2 billion dollars at the age of 21. However, He is currently working on a project where there is a possibility to secure the US-MEXICO border using AI-driven drones. Please check the article HERE.
Industrial Surveillance
Infrastructure provider companies use drones to monitor industrial areas e.g buildings, Railway tracks, etc to inspect whether the power lines, pipelines, gas-lines installation are okay. However, these regular inspections are important to make sure things are working properly before any accident happens.
Entertainment
filmmakers/ you-tubers / Vloggers/ Travelers Drones use drones to take wide-angle areal views to create high-quality video content. However, there are restrictions to take photos or videos in private places without permission.
Remote Area Inspection
Drones can reach out to places where there is no electricity, water, or internet facility. Also, It can take images of the landscapes, and based on that Major companies can make decisions to improve such areas.
Live Footage
News companies use drones in an amazing way to take live footage in places like public gatherings, some live events, accidents, fights, explosion or earthquake, etc. Also, drones can provide live coverage to news channels better than News Reporters / Journalists.
Real Estate Business Marketing
Some real estate companies use drones to find the right kind of house by taking pictures from the right angle of the house and posting them with the clients.
Drones for image processing
Some companies are using drone’s Neural network and image processing techniques to do facial recognition in case of insurance claims or fixing bank frauds etc.
Some good References
- Check this Interesting Article HERE about drones and AI !!
My Other Related Blog Links
- Also check my other Article on “Machine Learning in Cloud Security“ HERE.