Lowe - final draft

It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane but there is some new hardware zooming through the sky.

Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles, UAVs, or drones have flown into current technology in the form of the shelves in the form toys and hobbyist pieces all the way to military survelliance drones. The U.S. Department of Transportation has classified drones as “device(s) used or intended to be used for light in the air that has no onboard pilot.”

Austin Hixenbaugh, a Management Information System senior at Georgia Regents University, shared his opinion on UAVs and quadcopters.

“I like playing with [remote-controlled] items like trucks, cars and planes,” Hixenbaugh said. “I don’t really see the difference between [remote-controlled] airplanes and drones. Although drones seem to have the ability to capture video footage.”

 While Amazon.com has stayed silent about there recently released Amazon Prime Air service featuring 30 minute deliveries by drones, Amazon is a competitively active website that consumers can purchase quadcopters and other toy UAVs.

Chris Cole and Drew Wright, writers for the Drone Wars UK website gave a definition of current drones, consumer and military.

 “While there are dozens of different types of drones,” Cole and Wright said, “they basically fall into two categories: those that are used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes and those that are armed with missiles and bombs.”

This means that the most popular use of drones is purely for pleasure or surveillance of some sort. Small-sized quadcopters and drones can be had for under $100 on most purchasing websites. There are other more costly models that hobbyists pursue and rate amongst themselves.

Alex Bracetti, a writer for ComplexTech, recently rated the top 10 consumer drones in the current market.

“The most popular drone on the consumer market made a huge splash at last year’s CES,” said Bracetti of the Parrot AR. Drone 2.0. “Three being the improved control system, the built-I camera capable of capturing 720HD video and the ability to create its own wi-fi network.”

It goes without saying that these consumer drones are highly technical and some people other than the U.S. government, are working on how to apply these devices to business in day-to-day life.

Ian Nott, the founder of DR1, started his company out of Savannah College of Art and Design.

“Our mission is to provide very expensive, very technological UAV. Before, like on a movie set, the director would have to hire production crews with high booms and even helicopters to get aerial shots or even use CG,” Nott said. “We make the software to go on these UAVs to get shots that were never possible before.”

Although there are several possible arts-related application for drones, there are also agro and tech possibilities that Nott’s company is exploring.

“Say if you're a farmer and there's a field of crops... a big field of corn, you can fly one of these UAVs over the field and, using spectrum-anaylsis, figure out if some sections of the entire field are a little water starved or maybe need fertilizer,” Nott said. “Then the farmer can go out and make those adjustments. It would let you see certain areas instead of just looking at the whole field. You could also use our UAVs for inspection of roofs and towers. Things that people are risking life and limb for."

Nott and his associates are working on more potential uses and how to apply their hardware and software to other products and fields.

"This is the next computer industry,” Nott said. “We're the personal computers of the '70's and the  next Steve Jobs has yet to come along to show off Macintosh.”

As this article was going to press, a U.S. judge struck down the ruling that made consumer drones illegal to fly in U.S. airspace. This ruling affects all drone flyers and developers across the U.S. and, potentially, the globe.