Daniel Bender
John Graziano
Ryan Lewis
Michael Keith
Alejandro Fisher
Kickstart Research Brief Paper – Group 2
Drones are a small technological feat, that gives the consumer access to fly small helicopters like machines in the air. Drones have been a massive consumer product adored by many nerd junkies. Drones can be bought with cameras and can be remotely controlled with a Remote component. Some drones come in packs and additional appendages that allow for sustained flight. While other drones can be bought for cheap, and attached cameras. Most drones today are used to capture high range scenery that regular cameras couldn’t capture due to height restrictions. Thankfully regular drones don’t fall under this issue. However due to federal regulation you can’t fly a drone past 400 feet. Drones are slowly becoming a common product for most consumers. As time goes by, drones are becoming easier to develop and mass produced on a large scale. According to the Insurance information institute The number of commercial drone registrations have totaled about 412,000 in 2019 with more than a million consumers with registered drones. “The number of small hobbyist drones registered in the United States totaled 1.1 million units in 2019, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Commercial drone registrations totaled about 412,000 in 2019(FAA, 2020).”
With that being said drones are slowly becoming a normalized common product, as more and more consumers purchase the produce we could utilize this to our advantage to produce wifi type of drones. Our drones that could produce wifi hotspots in remote locations where cellphone towers couldn’t go.
The technology development research subject chosen to incorporate with our group assignment is the current drone battery life, flight time and recharging time . The battery plays a big role in the design and structure of a drone because batteries are heavy, they take a long time to recharge, and battery replacement can be very expensive. Some of the biggest questions about our group’s drone signal idea would be the in air flight time of the drone, the amount of time it takes to charge, and the battery life of a drone. Currently available on the market, the longest in air flight time available from a drone is 30 minutes in ideal conditions(Insurance Information Institute,2018). If we’re creating a drone to help distribute WiFi signals, then drone air flight time should be our biggest priority. The longer we can have the drones in the air, the less energy we’re using towards charging the drones as well as distributing a longer consistent signal. The next important factor to our drones would be charging time. Some drones take as long as 3-hours to fully charge. Others may only take 50 minutes(Insurance Information Institute,2018). As a general rule, a charger with a higher output (indicated in amps) will power batteries faster. A 6-amp charger, for example, can reduce the charge time by more than a half compared to a 2-amp. Our job as a team would be to find/create the quickest and most energy efficient recharging battery stations for our drones. The last feature our group would look at is the actual drone battery itself. LiPo batteries power most drones today because they’re better than the older NiCad options. They last longer, they output power faster, and they store more energy. Our group would prefer to use the most up to date LiPo batteries available on the market. \
The next big advancement in wireless technology is the introduction of the 5G network, offering faster speeds with more reliable connections. Just shy of over 10 years ago the world was just introduced to 4G connectivity, touting speeds 500 times faster than the previous 3G networks, while also supporting standards for HD TV and high-quality video calls. Now with the advent of 5G we can be expecting speeds upwards of 100 gigabits, which is close to 100 times faster than 4G(Gemalto, 2019) . In the US 5G is only available on a few phones and few carriers. According to the article written by John McCann from techradar, “By the end of 2019, Verizon 5G has gone live in parts of 31 cities, starting with Chicago and reaching Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, Dallas, and filtering to smaller cities like Memphis, Columbus, and Grand Rapids.” This demonstrates how Verizon is making big investments in expanding 5G connectivity.
A development seen in drones is the consumer base growing at a very fast rate. At the start of 2018, the size of the drone market was sitting at $14.1 billion USD. While that already seems like a massive number, it was estimated to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.5% till the year of 2024. That would put the drone market at $43.1 billion USD in 2024 according to Lukas Schroth in his research, “Schroth, L., Aerospace Engineering, International Business Administration, & MTU Aero Engines AG. (2019, November 13). The Drone Market 2019-2024: 5 Things to Know.”
Drones have seen an increase in certain mapping skills. Recent drones have shown to be able to execute 3D mapping of an area with examples of drones helping farmers with agriculture and conservation. With having the drone be able to map out its own surrounding, having it fly around by itself or stay around an area would be easier than ever. It is also able to feed data to people. That could be somehow connected with the Hotspot connection with people being able to connect their phones to the drone. With this sudden surge of drone technology, laws had to be implemented for control. While going over property with a drone might be seen as harmless to some, it is labeled as trespassing if the owner of the drone did not obtain permission. Civil Code 17808.8 includes visual images, sound recordings or any other form of physical impression taken in the property.
Our group expressed interest in both drone and connectivity technologies and after discussing and brainstorming with each other, we came up with the idea of using drones to overcome geological restrictions and infrastructure shortcomings. Imagine having a fast reliable connection hours after a hurricane, or providing a venue in a remote location with stable wifi for patrons. With our FlyFi drone the struggle of setting up and maintaining a connection becomes a thing of the past without the wifi dead spots associated with previous solutions.
Sources:
Code Section. (2017, February 21). Retrieved from https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1708.8.&lawCode=CIV
“Facts + Statistics: Aviation and Drones.” III, www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-aviation-and-drones.Lumb, D. (2019, December 24). How Drones Will Impact Society: From Fighting War to Forecasting Weather, UAVs Change Everything. (2020, February 7). Retrieved from https://www.cbinsights.com/research/drone-impact-society-uav/
Schroth, L., Aerospace Engineering, International Business Administration, & MTU Aero Engines AG. (2019, November 13). The Drone Market 2019-2024: 5 Things to Know. Retrieved from https://www.droneii.com/the-drone-market-2019-2024-5-things-you-need-to-know
Verizon 5G: phones, coverage map and rollout cities. Retrieved from https://www.techradar.com/news/verizon-5g-phones
What is the difference between 4G and 5G? (2019, October 17). Retrieved from https://www.justaskgemalto.com/en/difference-4g-5g/
Daniel Bender 