Drone components: DIY Drone Set ZD850

What is a Drone?

A drone is a male bee but its body is bigger than all other bees except the queen with larger eyes. Their only job is to meet the queen for the production of the new generations of bees then falls out of the sky leaving an essential body behind.

The idea that a drone doesn’t have its own work leads to a secondary definition of a drone as someone who lives off the work of others. In fact, at the end of summer, the worker bees expel the remaining drones out of the hive. They eat too much and do nothing. They can be replaced in the spring.

This helps us to figure out the problem. We not only need to figure out a definition for drones, we also have to figure out what they’re going to do and not do.

While some agree that drones are unmanned, others point out that they’re piloted, preferring the acronym RPA for “remotely piloted aircraft.” That wouldn’t differentiate drones from remote-control aircraft, but it emphasizes that a human, who can be held responsible, is at the controls. A drone can be operated manually or it can be programmed to follow a fixed flight plan.

The distinguishing feature of a drone seems to be the promise of autonomy. Today, a typical flight consists of switching between manual flight and autopilot. How much further might it go? Given the right instrumentation and the ability to process that data, could a drone be programmed to make context-aware decisions, particularly ones that humans are not very good at?

A drone might detect problems before they occur, such as responding to gusts of wind or avoiding unexpected obstacles. A drone might also be able to communicate with other drones.

Can a drone be considered a robot, able to obey Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics? We need drones that explicitly avoid harming humans and can act to protect themselves from destruction. We should expect this much from any fully autonomous vehicle. A drone then might be said to have a mind of its own.

Although not everybody likes the word drone, it has become widespread and popular, used with great exaltation by hobbyists who hang out on the DIY Drones site and by professional aerial photographers.