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Chapter 1: What unique applications of drones are explored in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. It's safe to say that for good reason, nearly everyone seems to have an opinion when they hear the word drone. What you may not know is that drones are becoming more and more integrated into the infrastructure of our societies.
I want to use my time today to talk about an entirely different kind of drone use, much closer to home, that's already having life-saving impact.
That's Adam Bree, who leads the U.S. 's top drone manufacturer. In this talk, he acknowledges that most of us think of warfare when we think of drones. But he shows how autonomous drones are also transforming everything from emergency response to public safety, preventing wildfires, detecting faulty power lines, and catching crime in real time.
To showcase this, he ran a live demo on the TED stage where he launched a drone in Tokyo by piloting it from across the Pacific in Vancouver.
We're building towards a future where the default expectation for every emergency is that a drone shows up in a few seconds to provide targeted information, get better outcomes for everybody.
For Adam, the future is one where flying robots work seamlessly in the background, responding to emergencies before a human possibly could. Stick around after the talk. We caught up with TED's curator, Bilawal Sidhu, who shared a few more thoughts and takeaways on Adam's work for us to consider. That's all coming up right after a short break.
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Chapter 2: How are drones transforming emergency response and public safety?
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And now, our TED Talk of the day.
My guess is for many of you, drone is a scary concept. It might evoke images of weapons in Ukraine, in the skies over the Middle East, where these things are creating damage and devastation at a massive scale. Ukrainians reported last month 96% of the casualties they inflicted on Russian forces were done via drone strikes. Now, this is a terrifying new reality on the battlefield.
It's also one that we can't afford to ignore in the West. But I want to use my time today to talk about an entirely different kind of drone use, much closer to home, that's already having a lifesaving impact. And I think the best way to understand it is just to show it to you. So I'm going to demonstrate the robotics technology live here on stage. So we ...
are in Vancouver, but I am connected to a drone in Tokyo. So I'm going to click the launch button. And a real drone, this is all live, a real drone is going to launch itself on the other side of the Pacific. And I can just control it right here from my laptop. So it's a little bit like playing a video game. But I can fly around. I can look and see whatever I want to see.
So the thing that allowed me to do this is called a dock. Looks like kind of an intergalactic grill. So it's got a bunch of advanced technology in it. but it turns the drone into a fully autonomous device. It can be flown remotely, I don't need a person on scene, and it turns the drone into a software-defined thing. So I can fly it here, and the software will keep me safe.
So I can just cruise under this awning, or over, it's choice. I can tap on an object that I might be interested in.
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Chapter 3: What live demonstration of drone technology is showcased during the talk?
So now the drone is flying itself. It's autonomously tracking that car. So this is hands-off. It's a very powerful capability. So I'm going to stop this now and initiate an autonomous patrol of the area. So that's cool, but why does it actually matter? Well, I'm going to share with you a couple of stories.
So Oklahoma City Police Department has placed docked drones all over their city, and they're using them to respond to emergencies. So in this instance, a train operator called 911 in a panic, afraid that he might have hit something or someone on the tracks. Now, this is very difficult to access. On the ground, this is probably an hour's search, but the drone got there in seconds.
It was able to find that, unfortunately, there was somebody on the tracks, but because of the drone, they knew exactly where he was, they were able to guide in first responders, and they saved this guy's life. Another example. This is from San Francisco. Very different application, but same concept. Responding to a 911 instance, here there's a stolen vehicle.
So they're able to follow the stolen vehicle from the air. They know exactly where he is, they know what he's doing. I don't know about you, when I steal a car, I like to steal a license plate to go along with it. So SFPD knew that this happened, but they never actually caught anybody in the act. With the drone, they're able to get this asymmetric advantage. So now he's got stolen plates.
He's going to put the plates on his vehicle. conveniently holds it up so he can read it from the air. He's got a stolen vehicle, stolen plates, he's tinting the windows. So this is the beginning of a crime spree.
He's probably going to go off and steal a bunch more stuff, but the cops know exactly where he is, they know exactly what he's doing, so they roll a plainclothes unit out, they roll spike strips, he's got flat tires, can't go very far, they take him into custody. So this is safer for everybody involved. It's certainly safer for the community. It's also safer for the officers.
Honestly, it's even safer for the suspect, because they know exactly where he is and what he's doing. So since SFPD has implemented this technology, they've seen a 30% drop in crime, 40% drop in auto theft. I can't say that I blame the auto thieves. I probably wouldn't want to steal a car either. And this concept of drone as first responder is taking off across the country.
So it started with a few agencies. Hundreds of agencies are now using it. By the end of this year, it'll be thousands. And right now, about 5% of the U.S. population lives within a two-minute flight of a Skydio drone to respond to an emergency.
But there's 240 million 911 calls every year in the US, and we're building towards a future where the default expectation for every emergency is that a drone shows up in a few seconds to provide targeted information, get better outcomes for everybody. That's one example. I'm going to show you a different category of use, though.
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