The future of Quadcopters

Since I am willing to apply to the High-Tech Systems Honors track in my university which focuses on the application of knowledge of several domains to unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), I have decided to talk about it in this new post.

From a young age, I have always asked my parents to buy me a helicopter that I can control remotely. The only products available then were just small engines.
However, recently, I have noticed how UAVs are booming in tech stores. For instance, electronic stores in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and MediaMarkt in Eindhoven have a lot of these huge drones to sell. 
One could argue that, like Virtual Reality, they represent an important part of the future generations.
In my opinion, these engines can influence a lot our daily life since they can be used for several reasons. For instance: Filmmaking, posts delivery (Amazon), Aerial surveying... 
These are only a few examples out of tens others for which they could be used for.

Let's talk about how these engines are taking over some of the daily life tasks.

In Philadelphia, a dry cleaner armed with a DJI Phantom (see image at the beginning of this post) delivers free dry cleaning to one customer a month. A book rental company in Australia plans to deliver textbooks to college students via drone. A UK restaurant named Yo! Sushi uses drones remote-controlled by waitstaff to deliver burgers precariously to customers’ tables. Dominoes is testing pizza delivery by drone. 
There is no shadow of doubt that package delivery is one thing that UAVs will take over from humans. 

In addition, I think that Quadcopters could also be an effective way to save lives. One German nonprofit has released a concept for Defikopter, a copter that’s been modded to carry a defibrillator and parachute it down to heart attack victims. The drone, which can travel up to 69.2 kilometers an hour, could be useful for providing quick assistance to heart attack victims wherever they happen to be.

One last idea that I have been personally thinking about concerns Home Security UAV.
Indeed, a lot of people buy dogs to protect their house from robbers and happen to not take care of that dog as he is used as a simple object. This behaviour makes any person who respects animals sad. 
Hence, one thing for which a quadcopter could be useful is the security of our daily life.
For instance, a UAV could be placed in the roof and, after being activated by the human on the mode "Security" or "Night", uses sort of sensors to detect any robber. 
The UAV can for example stop the intrusive person by using an electrical net.

As these engines are gaining more and more popularity, laws have been decided: 

• Do not fly above 400 ft.
• Do not fly above a populated area.
• Always fly close enough to see your aircraft also called visual line of sight (VSOL).
• If flying First Person Video (FPV), have another person standing next to you spotting your aircraft so it does not leave your Visual Line of Sight (VSOL)
• Do not fly within 3 miles of an airport.
• Do not fly your aircraft for any commercial purpose.

In this Honors track, the responsible people ask the chosen students to choose an application on which we have to focus on starting from January. A lot of them, such as Computer Vision and Robotics, are extremely interesting.
Of course, if I have the great opportunity to be chosen, I would take without any hesitation Artificial Intelligence.

Here is one of the inspiring videos given during the introductory activity of the Honors track.

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