Drones are planting trees, helping paramedics in crises and herding cattle, all while the world鈥檚 biggest retailers are racing to develop air traffic control systems that will satisfy regulators.
There is no doubt we鈥檙e on the cusp of the 鈥渘ext industrial revolution鈥� of drones and robots, says Toronto-based technology expert Avery Swartz. It鈥檚 unclear exactly what the impact will be on jobs, she says, although many economists and analysts predict drones will transform jobs, rather than replace them outright.
鈥淭hink about this as not being a complete threat to your livelihood,鈥� Swartz told CTV鈥檚 Your Morning Friday.
For instance, Seattle-based DroneSeed is working with forestry companies to plant trees in deforested areas of the Pacific northwest. There are more than 300 million acres of deforestation in U.S. and, at current planting costs, it would cost about US $100 billion to replant them.
A good human tree planter 鈥� a common summer job for many young Canadians 鈥� can plant about two acres or 800 trees in a day. But that one person handling 15 drones can plant 800 seeds an hour.
There is a project underway in Atlantic Canada with more than 120 paramedics and training paramedics using drones to survey simulated mass casualty situations and to deploy human help faster and more efficiently.
Other research is underway in Canada to use drones to herd cows and to improve the yield of potato crops in New Brunswick.
鈥淭here a lot of really interesting, useful applications for drones.鈥�
But of course, the largest commercial push for drones is to overcome the high cost and inefficiency of the so-called 鈥渓ast mile鈥� of delivery to a consumer鈥檚 door. That鈥檚 especially applicable in Canada, with a highly distributed population and huge swaths of remote areas, says Swartz.
China鈥檚 biggest retailer, JD.com, has announced plans to develop drones that can carry up to a ton of payload. The company says the drones will deliver consumer goods to remote areas and farm produce to cities. Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon and Walmart are all invested in drone development, too.
鈥淏ig players all playing in this space,鈥� Swartz said.
What is dragging behind is the development of air traffic control systems that will safely manage the drones and prevent collisions with buildings, trees, other drones and aircraft. Right now, aviation authorities only allow commercial drone flights for experimental reasons.
Swartz says the major players are working on using sophisticated software to guide drones and developing artificial intelligence to teach drones to change course mid-flight depending on conditions.
Amazon, for instance, is now testing drone delivery in England and opening a research facility near Paris to develop an air traffic control system.
Government agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom also have projects underway to develop such systems and NASA is testing one in co-operation with the Federal Aviation Administration, with the goal of releasing it in 2019.
