Examples of Non-Military, Non-Police use of Drones (please add your own)

One of the things I get asked most often about by the press is for examples of non-military, non-police use of drones. Part of our function here at DIY Drones is to educate the public about civilian and peaceful uses of drones, so I'm always happy to reel off some examples, from agriculture to Hollywood (aside from the main reason we do it here, which is education and fun). Atmel has also created a great list of "18 ways that drones are being used today", which illuminates how broad their non-military applications are.

But to make it easier to get the word out, I've started a repository of such uses, below. I'll link to this post from the front page of DIY Drones. Please add your own examples and suggestions (including categories I may have missed) in the comments, and I'll update the post to include them as they come in.

Examples of Non-Military, Non-Police use of Drones

Agriculture

Search and Rescue

Hollywood

Sports

Wildlife management

Science/Environment

News reporting

Real Estate

Mapping

Delivering Medicine

Human Rights Monitoring

Communications networks

And lots more in the comments below and at the DC Area Drone User group

Avian research- I guess that goes under Science / research: the system at present is a "chain drag" two people dragging a chain to fluch birds, stop and then walk to where bird was flushed to detect & count eggs....destruction to unattended nests happens. We have been using a uav as a range mapping platform and IR to pick up heat signatures then plotting these "hot spots" to walk directly to to count nests & eggs....The use of these systems are going to explode once all the red-tape is figured out. an off note...I dislike the RC/UAV connection. we work very hard to uphold safety standards, flight regulations and such, and 'others" simply strap a camera to a helo / plane and say they are doing the same thing without consideration to changing flight dynamics, weather conditions, or actual data collection.....I really apperc. DIY, and all who comment on all these issues.... "Knowlege is Power" School House Rocks

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Comments

RoboBill March 4, 2014 at 7:35am

Here is a sports example that I'm working on.

Having played tennis all my life, I thought why do people have to roll dry tennis courts after a rain. Why not have a robot do the monotonous job of pushing water off a court.

Thus I patented and am creating the automatic tennis court drying machine at www.autocourtdryer.com
Eugene Potapov May 29, 2013 at 8:16am

Last months issue of highly ranked Frontiers on Ecology and Environment (of the Ecological Society of America) has a feature on UAV application including the splendid cover picture http://www.esajournals.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1364833540230/f...

paper itself: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/120150
Moderator

Ruwan December 22, 2012 at 7:11am

Hai Tran's coptercam is used to cover cricket matches (sports).

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/coptercam-used-in-a-cricket-match
Eddie Weeks December 8, 2012 at 6:02am

I am Going to the artic this summer to measure the currents with this custom built boat... APM 2.5 Rover..

Eddie Weeks
bcrow December 7, 2012 at 1:50pm

Avian research- I guess that goes under Science / research: the system at present is a "chain drag" two people dragging a chain to fluch birds, stop and then walk to where bird was flushed to detect & count eggs....destruction to unattended nests happens. We have been using a uav as a range mapping platform and IR to pick up heat signatures then plotting these "hot spots" to walk directly to to count nests & eggs....The use of these systems are going to explode once all the red-tape is figured out. an off note...I dislike the RC/UAV connection. we work very hard to uphold safety standards, flight regulations and such, and 'others" simply strap a camera to a helo / plane and say they are doing the same thing without consideration to changing flight dynamics, weather conditions, or actual data collection.....I really apperc. DIY, and all who comment on all these issues.... "Knowlege is Power" School House Rocks
Eugene Potapov December 1, 2012 at 8:07pm

Surveys of the nest of the Steller's Sea Eagles (the largest eagle in the world) in the Magadan State Nature Reserve, North-East Siberia, Russia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qGmP0rdPfA

and the national TV news on the topic (sorry, in Russian) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZfBEZtnGb8

or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJeqLT31zA
Anderl December 1, 2012 at 2:36am

Here another example of use in archeology,

http://gislounge.com/using-unmanned-aerial-systems-uas-for-remote-s...

Also useful in Infrastructure Inspection.

Regards
Andrew Fernie November 30, 2012 at 3:14pm

Montreal, April 11, 2012 – (NYSE: CAE; TSX: CAE) – CAE and Aeronautics today announced that the first series of flights of the Miskam unmanned aerial system (UAS) have been conducted successfully over the past several weeks at the UAS Centre of Excellence (Centre d'excellence des drones) located at Alma airport in Quebec, Canada.

The demonstration flights represent the first phase of a research and development (R&D) project aimed at demonstrating how unmanned systems can be used for civil applications such as remote inspection of pipelines and hydroelectric installations, surveillance of forest fires, observation of critical natural resources, assessing natural disasters and a range of other applications. Full link here.
Adrian Eves November 29, 2012 at 11:43am

Regular commercial service for forestry:
http://www.forestryjournal.co.uk/newsitefiles/2012/0112Web/UAS.pdf
Distributor

Guto Santaella November 28, 2012 at 8:13am

Chris, UAVs can also be used for electricity generation:

http://www.suasnews.com/2012/06/16500/a-design-to-generate-uav-elec...

Guto Santaella

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