Drones Owning Themselves

On BBC Radio 4’s program FutureProofing of the 16th September the software developer Mike Hearn discussed the potential of cars and drones owning themselves. His ideas build upon collaborative open ventures such as Apache and Linux.

Cars
The cars could act as autonomous one machine businesses which would charge people for rides, then from the profits they could buy fuel, repair themselves and even buy upgrades. They would begin as a new car from a factory but would then become self sustaining/financing with even the ability to purchase a new upgrade car from the factory. Hearn suggests if the autonomous vehicles owned themselves they would provide cheaper fairs than those owned by major corporations.

This links in with the ambitious plans in the Finnish capital Helsinki to provide a ‘comprehensive, point-to-point “mobility on demand” system’ allowing people to purchase transportation options directly from a phone app linking in with availability of everything from driver-less cars, taxis, buses, bikes and ferries on the required route. This could potentially do away with the requirement of car ownership within the city by 2025 by beating it on cost and convenience.

More details of the car aspect of the idea can be found in an article at the BBC News Website.

Drones
He also discussed the potential for the development of delivery services for packages and parcels by drones; where the drones would sell their services to people or companies and use the money earned to maintain themselves. If demand in area was reduced they could move to an area with more demand.

Amazon are currently developing their Amazon Prime Air drone package delivery service.

Wile the first drone delivery took place in the USA in July.

Potential
With the growing importance of drones within archaeological recording this has great potential to make it easier and cheaper for companies to employ this kind of technology without the significant outlay that is required. Drones with a number of different recording packages could be setup in useful locations around the country. They could then be employed by a company or individual for a purpose and transported to the site by the individual who pays for their services. The drone would be paid and would use the finances to pay for charging, repairs and upgrades.

This could obviously go one step further with the introduction of driver-less vehicles; with the drone being based in a vehicle which deploys it to the required location, contains the software required for the processing of the data recorded and its control interface.

Limitations
The ideas of Mike Hearn are only a “thought experiment” and he is not involved in their development, although he is closely involved with the Bitcoin virtual currency which could be used as a method for the drone to pay for itself.