[jdiez17]

Totally agreed. I found myself mesmerized watching the short video [1]; wow cool tech, nice views... but there are serious ethical implications for the engineers working on these systems. Let's not forget that our work as technologists does not exist in a vacuum.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4T6Vr4a1hY

[Aeolun]

To be fair, work on recovering drone aircraft in midair can be employed for a whole lot more than just military purposes.

[flipbrad]

I could imagine it being useful for search and rescue missions

[CaptainJustin]

Can you imagine how this would the increase the search radius of a air rescue mission? One search and rescue flight looking for survivors could launch a half dozen drones each extending the explored area by thousands of square kilometres per hour.

[derekjdanserl]

How often are drones used for anything of that sort? Any actual examples? Or are you just purely fantasizing?

[Aeolun]

Just found a quick example.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-5...

[ceejayoz]

Drones are pretty quickly being adopted by search and rescue and firefighting organizations. No reason to think that's gonna stop.

https://www.birminghamtimes.com/2021/11/video-drone-rescue-s...

[yissp]

"Search and rescue" seems to be given as the use-case for every new development in robotics. Is it basically a meme in that field by this point?