As Insiders, you get the chance to see some of our biggest stories before anyone else — a full 24 hours before they hit TV screens.
Researchers at Virginia Tech are practicing using drones to search for radioactive materials that might be hidden in cars.
“So these are radioactive sources that we’re going to use for the test that we can detect with our drone,” said
And even though the radioactivity is tiny, the emerging software had no problem finding it.
And soon the technology may be used to sweep U.S. ports to make sure incoming cargo poses no threat to the country. It’s just scratching the surface of where drones may be taking us.
“We have, I’m going to guess 10 to 20 faculty, not only here in Blacksburg but the agricultural research extension centers doing work with drones,” said Kevin Korchersberger, Ph.D. and drone researcher.
As class after class of Korchersberger’s students graduate, the possibilities for what drones can do gets just that much bigger.
“I flew over the area. Collected the imagery,” said Danny Whitehurst, a Ph.D. graduate research assistant.
He recently patched together photos from a drone to help re-construct a community in Buchanan County where flooding destroyed 20 homes.
“You kind of feed up the images with the GPS coordinates, and it mostly does its thing,” said Whitehurst.
3D images, that can be twisted and turned so the neighborhood can eventually be returned to its previous state. Or better.
Virginia Tech students are working with people in Malawi, an African nation where transportation and even communication can be difficult — flying medical samples on inexpensive drones designed in Blacksburg from remote areas back to cities.
“So we launch the aircraft with this pack of dried blood cell spot samples. In the aircraft autonomously went on its mission. It climbed up to about 200 m of altitude named for the airport and vanished,” said Korchersberger. “Twenty minutes later we drove down the road and got within cell coverage and found out the aircraft had made an autonomous landing at the airport.”
The problem with advancing drone usage isn’t the technology. The problem is that it’s illegal to fly a drone beyond your line of sight.
“The two biggest concerns that the FAA are concerned about is that drone interfering with or running into a traditional aircraft. Or an in air aircraft occupied by somebody. That’s the first. The second is flying the drone over people or over moving vehicles,” said Tombo Jones with the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership.
Jones is working on ways the FAA can safely let drones fly to more places safely. He says we are only doing about 5% of what drones could do.
Jones said drone deliveries done by WING the New River valley-based company, are just scratching the surface — using special permissions known as extended visual line of sight.
But he and others at Virginia Tech are already trying to figure out how to create highways in the sky for the time when drones are carrying cargo and people.
People carrying drones are already being developed — and fast. Jones believes we’ll see people riding in them — instead of cars in as soon as ten years. As soon as technology and regulation are ready.
Source: WSLS News 10