Looking ahead: What’s on the horizon for drones?

Abstract

As researchers envisage new ways to use drones as flying laboratories, others are tinkering with their robotic insides, trying to make them smaller, faster, and safer. Many drone engineers are intent on designing flying robots to be more autonomous so that they can perform tasks without a pilot. Imagine, for example, drones capable of quickly mapping collapsed buildings to help search-and-rescue personnel find trapped victims or identify looming threats such as a fire or gas leak, says Vijay Kumar, who is developing this technology at the University of Pennsylvania. Others are working to improve communication between drones so that swarms of these flying machines can accomplish tasks that a single unmanned aerial vehicle could not achieve alone. Researchers could, for instance, deploy a flock of flying sensors to track the edges of a suspicious airborne plume spreading across the sky in real time, says Kam K. Leang, director of the