Drones, they’re everywhere. Camera shops that once sold tripods and lens, now sell drones. Computer stores found helicopters sell better than touch screens. Toy shops long suspected toys are not just for kids and a quadcopter with a gimbal mount is living proof.
It’s when you get into the serious side of buying one that you find out boffins do not use the ‘D’ word—drones are not called drones.
They are referred to in geek speak as RPAS. The next time you walk into a toy store adopt a knowing swagger when approaching the sales assistant and drop the RPAS. Unless you wanted to use the shorter UAV: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or if your budget was tight, say SUAS: Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. But for most occasions, the Remotely Piloted Aerial System is fine to use. You could speak the parlance of advanced users by dropping FPV: First Person View whereby a pair of goggles connects to your smartphone to let the controller see a birds eye view in real time of the UAV’s flight.
Imagine in the not-too-distant-future when drones take to the skies like a flock of seagulls spotting a newly unwrapped parcel of fried potato chips. Drones will be the delivery service of the future. Pizza orders will be delivered by drone, which puts an entirely new spin on Eagle Boys Pizzas. As drones get bigger such as the hexacopter, six props for better lift, they have the ability to carry heavier loads such as a six-pack of beer. Think of watching a game in a packed stadium where the queue for a plastic cup of beer goes out to the car park when you can have a drone locate lock into your phone’s GPS and deliver enough cold beer for you and your mates.
Authorities have already stamped rules and regulations for flying a drone to dominate their control as fun police. Drones are not allowed to fly within thirty metres of people or animals, which makes magpie bombing of that pesky bird who attacked you last week out of the question. Drones cannot be flown over populated areas, which wipes out almost all of the fun things you bought the drone for in the first place.
Then there’s inter-office drones. Send a tweet to the coffee shop down stairs and have your cream doughnut and coffee delivered to your desk. Or the personal drones, the ones that wake up at six in the morning and hover above your head until you wake up. A much bigger Octocopter would pick you up and carry you into the city and plonk you on the footpath, all remotely controlled from an app on your phone. And when it is time to leave work, your Octocopter would be hovering outside. One those nights when someone suggests drinks after work, the ride home would be the safer option and you’d reset the time and location on your app. Oh, but wait, there was that pub crawl, which sounded good at the time. Dude, where’s my drone?
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