Washington
The current craze of grabbing the
latest mobile phone may soon be replaced by a desire to own a drone, according
to Indian-origin scientist Parimal Kopadekar from NASA.
In five to 10 years from now, every
home may have a drone, Kopadekar said at a conference on Unmanned Aerial
Systems Traffic Management hosted by Nasa and the Silicon Valley Chapter of the
Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International last week.
"I see a time when every home
will have a drone," Kopadekar, manager of Nasa's Safe Autonomous
System Operations Project at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California,
was quoted as saying by USA Today.
ÂgYou are going to use a drone to
do rooftop inspections. You are going to be able to send a drone to Home Depot
to get a screw driver," he noted.
He said that "this is in
five or 10 years".
Scientists conceive new beneficial
applications for these aircraft, including goods delivery, infrastructure
inspection, search and rescue, and agricultural monitoring.
ÂgThe sky could become increasingly
crowded as personal and commercial uses of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS),
commonly called drones, become more popular," Kopardekar pointed
out.
In collaboration with companies like
Google, Amazon, Lochheed Martin, Raytheon, Airware, DroneDeploy, Matternet,
Cisco and Verizon, NASA is working towards an air traffic control system for
small, low-altitude drones.
"We
have 125 collaborators and it is growing," Kopadekar said. — IANS
