Drones

A commercial drone with video capabilities

Drones, more formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are aircrafts without human pilots that can operate either autonomously or by remote control. Drone technology was originally developed for military use but has since been applied to other tasks considered too dangerous, difficult, or expensive for manned aircraft. Commercial variants are publicly available for purchase, typically for recreation. The usage and impact of drones for environmental, commercial, and surveillance applications has been a topic of discussion. Ethical issues include residential privacy, geofencing, UAV noise, transparency in military action, the well-being of military drone operators, and automated drone systems.

History

The origination of drone technology stretches back to the end of World War I when the United States developed a design for aerial torpedoes. In 1915, British armed forces used aerial imagery to capture maps of German fortifications. Aerial mapping is now used widely for both military and civil purposes. The U.S. produced the first remote-controlled aircraft in 1939. However, pilots were still needed for takeoff.

Israel developed unpiloted surveillance machines in 1973, later collaborating with the U.S. to produce a reconnaissance drone. In 1994, the Pentagon produced the first generation of Predator drones, initially armed solely with surveillance cameras but later approved to carry missiles. These surveillance drones could provide 60-mile panoramic views.

After 9/11, a targeted killing campaign was approved to eliminate specific individuals. The first such attack by a drone occurred in 2002 when the target was incorrectly assumed to be Osama bin Laden.

Since then, the U.S. has completed numerous drone strikes in countries such as Pakistan and Somalia. The Federal Aviation Administration has approved 934 government agencies in the U.S. to operate drones. However, there has been much public debate about the ethics of drones due to numerous civilian casualties they have caused. This debate, in addition to concerns about privacy, has led 35 states to introduce legislation limiting drone use by government agencies.

Features

All drones are autonomous to some extent because they can fly or navigate without a human pilot. Although drones vary in size and capability, their general structure is similar to that of manned aircraft. Propellers are necessary for keeping drones airborne and stable. Electronic speed controllers (ESCs) deliver electricity to outrunner motors, which require a lot of power to spin the propellers of a drone. To make the drones self-reliant, flight controller boards, which can be updated to improve performance, have sensors that measure various aspects of movement. Smaller drones are generally operated by Lithium-polymer batteries that deliver high-energy bursts of power, but large drones rely on fuel similarly to traditional aircraft.

Drones are generally tracked remotely using a satellite link to a ground-control station. However, completely autonomous drones are being developed that use artificial intelligence to continuously learn and improve upon their specified operations. These drones also have radios that allow them to communicate with each other. Because autonomous drones can make decisions much more quickly than humans, there have been ethical concerns about their military applications.

Applications

Commercial

Drones can be used commercially for anything from monitoring livestock to filmmaking. In February of 2017, drones were used to help map new parking garages and a public-transit station for the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.

One of the most famous commercial applications of drones is Amazon’s development of Prime Air. Prime Air is a new delivery option being developed by Amazon that will deliver packages to customers in less than 30 minutes using drones. The primary goal of Prime Air is to create a fully autonomous delivery service that would reduce much of Amazon’s company costs. However, there are many regulatory barriers preventing Prime Air from being implemented.

Environmental

Drones are useful in monitoring and mitigating environmental disasters because they can access areas too dangerous for human pilots. In October 2016, NASA utilized a large drone to track Hurricane Matthew. This was a safer, cheaper option for collecting weather data than commissioning single pilot planes as NASA has done in the past. Drones are also being tested for aerial firefighting. These drones are designed to drop balls that ignite into flames and burn grass to prevent wildfires from spreading.

In sensitive ecological areas, drones can be useful for conservation efforts. In 2014, a team of college students created a biodegradable drone that can monitor and collect data from these areas without causing destruction. People are already considering the potential military applications of a drone that could quickly decompose if it crashed in enemy territory.

Agricultural

Agricultural drones have changed farming methods in the past few years. Drones that fly over farms are able to monitor crop progress, check to make sure crops are healthy, as well as check damage after a storm. Drones ensure that farms are performing at a maximum yield. Drones play a huge part in the future of farming as they have the potential to perform more valuable tasks. .

Surveillance

Through their utilization of live-feed video, infrared cameras, sensors, and radar, drones can carry out advanced surveillance without drawing attention. In addition to their mapping and facial recognition capabilities, some of these drones intercept phone activity and determine individuals’ locations through the use of Wi-Fi crackers and fake cell phone towers. Although more commonly used to carry out military missions in non-U.S. territories, surveillance drones have recently been used within the U.S. for purposes such as tracking gang activity and reducing crime. There are concerns that drones will be used to spy on citizens with no legal basis.

Loss of Jobs

One problem with the advances of technology, as seen in the past, is the loss of jobs. It is hypothesized that drones will take away a lot of jobs, thereby creating more unemployment causing a cascade effect of lower wages, and ultimately moving humans to a less caring society. Commercial use of drones will worsen the human contact that is necessary for developing a conscious of what is right or wrong based on how our actions affect others. For instance, it is easy to blame a drone for a missed delivery, as it cannot respond back as it is just mechanical parts. However, it is much more appropriate and human to discuss the issue with another human being who's responsibility to do resolve those issues. Losing jobs is important, but it is arguable that knowing what is to be human is of the upmost importance in maintaining a caring society.

Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV)

Another type of drone, known as an underwater drone or UUV, is a vehicle that is able to operate underwater without human interaction. These drones are able to collect data independently and report back to the user. Boeing has introduced its largest UUV that is 51 feet long and can operate at months at a time. The Navy uses UUVs for underwater surveillance and mine detection while scientists use UUVs to study lakes, oceans, and ocean floors. The oil and gas industry also uses UUVs to make detailed maps of the seafloor and monitoring pipelines.

Ethical Issues

Due to recent and rapid technological advances in drones, legal regulation of the operation of drones of every variety -- recreational, industrial, and military -- has lagged behind the adoption of drones. Concerns over appropriate safety requirements, operating environments, operator certifications, and the very applications of drones are the subject of much debate. Thus, it will take some time before governments can develop legal, moral, and ethical standards for all possible use-cases of drones. Therefore, there are numerous issues that have arisen because of the advent of drone technology.

Residential Privacy

With the increase of drones amongst the public, there has been an increasing amount of reports of people assaulting drones because of them trespassing on private property. One incident that happened in July of 2016 was when a Kentucky father spotted a drone hovering over his backyard where his two daughters were sunbathing. Consequently, he shot the drone down with his shotgun. Another New Jersey man also shot down a drone to protect his family's privacy. Cases like these are not unusual as drones can and have intruded on individual's privacies and resonates a great point in spatial privacy. Before people would feel secure behind their fences, but the introduction of drones make the fence irrelevant. And currently, due to how new the technology is, there's no national regulatory regime to handle drone privacy.

Geofencing

To help promote privacy measures, some drone companies such as DJI pushed a software update that used geofencing. The update was designed to limit flying drones over sensitive areas such as prisons and airports as well as Washington, D.C. The way the software works is by enacting a virtual barrier to prevent drones from flying over "no-fly-zones". These zones would only be accessible for a temporary amount of time by verified DJI accounts. While this is a step towards ensuring privacy measures are taken for the new technology, some people have felt that limiting where people can fly infringes on a person's freedom to fly a drone. Yet, there are definitely advantages for companies to do this as geofencing can help prevent drone manufacturers from receiving bad press should drones crash in sensitive areas.

UAV Noise

Drones must be flown at a low altitude due to the FAA rules so that the operator is always in visual contact with the drone. This means when drones are being operated they are very noisy and can interrupt wildlife and populations. Drones can essentially fly anywhere interrupting and causing noise in people's backyards as well as disturbing animals in nature. The NPS ban was created partly due to the noise concerns in disturbing Big Horn Sheep in Utah and interrupting visitors at Grand Canyon National park.

A rendering of a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone launching a munition.

Transparency in Military Action

Historically, conventional military incursions have been high-profile, newsworthy, and publicly obvious events. The decision to go to war was made only with the most careful of consideration and public debate. Drones, however, have begun to subvert this standard of public knowledge of violent action because they can be operated by just a few members of a military team at very low cost whereas an invasion takes a relatively large number of participants and huge logistical expense. The low barrier to use of drones in military attacks -- commonly referred to as "drone strikes" -- has permitted government and military officials to take action while revealing little to no awareness of their operations to the public.

This advantage of drones has been leveraged repeatedly by the United States government and military to conduct strategic missile strikes on foreign enemies. Additionally, the ability to maintain opaqueness has led to the idea of the United States' participation in a "shadow war", or a conflict in which the American public is largely unaware of the specifics of the conflict and specific engagements within the larger war. Historically, the participation of the United States in violent conflict has been confirmed by the public through the debate and testimony of elected officials, however drones have begun to move the debate over whether or not to join a conflict away from the realm of public influence.

Well-Being of Military Drone Operators

Military applications of drones are ethically problematic not only because they are easily operated in relative obscurity and with questionable degrees of oversight, but also on account of the ethics of remote operation of military vehicles. Numerous studies in recent years have begun to investigate the health and mental well-being of military service-men and -women who serve as remote drone pilots. Some researchers have postulated that they "expect that drone pilots actually have a higher rate of mental health problems because of the unique pressures of their job" than their colleagues who fly manned missions. . The evidence does not clearly indicate whether post-traumatic stress disorder occurs among remote operators at higher rates than pilots of manned missions, however there is a growing concern over the requirements of the job of a remote pilot and the psychological stress of the role.

Automated Drone Systems

Automated Drone Systems, also referred to as Unmanned Systems (UMS), have sparked a revolution in contemporary war fighting. According to Noel Sharkey, the main ethical concern surrounding automated drone systems is "that no autonomous robots or artificial intelligence systems are able to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants." Currently, there are no visual or sensing systems set up to protect civilians and others alike from automated drone strikes. Furthermore, there is a great deal of confusion over who would be held accountable if a mishap were to occur.