Today we will talk about the future of drones and their impact on society. Everyone's favorite mad scientist, Nikola Telsa, invented the RC boat in 1898. But one of the first mass-produced unmanned aerial drones was the Radioplane. It was a small remote-controlled plane mass-produced for the Army during World War II by this actor: Reginald Denney. Denney essentially created the drone industry as a sideline to acting, and strangely Marilyn Monroe was discovered as an actress while working in one of his factories. It's crazy. So basically if we want to be actors we should work in the drone industry instead of doing shows on Facebook.... A missed opportunity. But the commercial drone industry in America has flourished with the advent of smartphones that can be used as controllers, and now consumer drones can do really cool things like racing. Run? Did you just say racing? Wait… are we going to watch some drones race? I think we'll see a lot of drones racing. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay We're here at Bitfire Inc with Clint Hild, whose hobby is drone racing, as well as running drone racing in New York. It weighs about 35g, you can chase kids with these, you can chase pets, fly outside. You know, whatever, fly in the house. The protected covers make it very safe for indoors, around people. And it's just a lot of fun. Out of every event I've done, the most successful ones have had 10-15 riders. On top of all the technical stuff you have to deal with, there's the issue of customizing these things. If you build one flown by one pilot, another pilot might have one that looks exactly the same. So how do you know who's who? You're in the car and you're driving the car, when you put on your glasses and you turn everything on, you're sitting in this. You become this dimension. Understood. I think I understand. You don't know what you're doing. I know what I'm doing. See, I get it. NO! Oh, boy. Wait, is that a Boost Mobile store? Consumer drones have a future, not necessarily a fun one. It is true. I was actually really fascinated by the future of swarming drones. Swarms of programmed drones that communicate with each other. A company called RoboBee is developing drones the size of a paperclip and using them in swarms that can monitor the weather and actually pollinate flowers when all the bees are dead. OH. I forgot that all the bees are dying. It's sad. But let's talk about the positive effects drones are having right now. We met with the Flight to Remember Foundation, a nonprofit that uses drones to show hospice patients real-time videos of their most cherished places in life. So what is Flight to Remember? I went to the hospice websites and clicked on “contact” and said “hey, you know what?” I have this idea.' With a drone we will be able to virtually transport these people as a last wish, or visit them. Why do you use drones instead of things like FaceTime or conference call robots? I think the value we provide is giving them a view that they've never seen before. It's the different perspective that drones can provide. The different view that they've never seen before of a place that is so meaningful to them and rooted in their history or whatever it may be, and they see it totally different for the last time in their life. It's special. And I'm sure there are a million of them, but what's one story that really conveys the impact of what you do? A gentleman he was, he was older, he had Alzheimer's and he couldn't remember the last 20 years.