Tech

Let’s learn about flying drones for science

Airborne robots help scientists study marine mammals, monitor crops and more 

a drone flies over a field of soybeans at sunset

Drones could help farmers by scouting fields for thirsty crops or pollutants, or delivering medicine to sick plants.

evandrorigon/E+/Getty Images

By Maria Temming

Drones are pretty versatile tools. These flying robots have delivered packages and fought fires. They conduct surveillance and shoot movies. And in recent years, they have gathered data for a wide range of scientific efforts.

Studying and protecting wildlife are some of the most popular scientific uses for drones. Researchers have flown drones over oceans to measure how much whales eat, record what they sound like and inspect how they breathe. Other drones have helped keep tabs on endangered monkeys and orangutans. Still others have kept an eye out for poachers that might hurt rhinos or protected birds from airplanes.

Other scientists aim to use drones to improve agriculture. Sensor-toting drones could fly over fields to scout for thirsty plants or scan for pollutants. They could even distribute medicine to diseased crops from the air.

The list of potential uses for drones goes on. They can collect air samples from forest fires to study the microbes inside the smoke. They can also 3-D print structures that could one day be built on other planets. If you could fly a drone anywhere in the world, what would you use it to study? The sky is literally the limit!

Want to know more? We’ve got some stories to get you started:

Meet robots on a mission to help birds A new generation of bird-like robots is helping people better understand and protect the wild animals that inspired them. (11/2/2023) Readability: 7.3

These flying robots protect endangered wildlife Flying drones make conservation work much easier. Around the world, drones and artificial intelligence help scientists study or protect endangered animals. (3/10/2022) Readability: 7.1

Wildfire smoke seeds the air with potentially dangerous microbes Drones are helping researchers collect air samples from forest fire smoke. (9/2/2021) Readability: 7.9

In 2011, Lian Pin Koh and Serge Wich flew one of the world’s first conservation drones over Sumatra, an island in Indonesia. They saw how people used the land and an orangutan nest in the top of a tree.

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Activities

Word find

Want to build your own drone? Check out this how-to guide from Science Buddies!

Power Words

More About Power Words

3-D printing: A means of producing physical items — including toys, foods and even body parts — using a machine that takes instructions from a computer program. That program tells the machine how and where to lay down successive layers of some raw material (the “ink”) to create a three-dimensional object.

agriculture: The growth of plants, animals or fungi for human needs, including food, fuel, chemicals and medicine.

birds: Warm-blooded animals with wings that first showed up during the time of the dinosaurs. Birds are jacketed in feathers and produce young from the eggs they deposit in some sort of nest. Most birds fly, but throughout history there have been the occasional species that don’t.

crop: (in agriculture) A type of plant grown intentionally grown and nurtured by farmers, such as corn, coffee or tomatoes. Or the term could apply to the part of the plant harvested and sold by farmers.

data: Facts and/or statistics collected together for analysis but not necessarily organized in a way that gives them meaning. For digital information (the type stored by computers), those data typically are numbers stored in a binary code, portrayed as strings of zeros and ones.

drone: A remote-controlled, pilotless aircraft or missile.

endangered: An adjective used to describe species at risk of going extinct.

fire: The burning of some fuel, creating a flame that releases light and heat.

forest: An area of land covered mostly with trees and other woody plants.

literally: An adjective indicating that the phrase it modifies is precisely true. For instance, to say: "It's so cold that I'm literally dying," means that this person actually expects to soon be dead, the result of getting too cold.

microbe: Short for microorganism. A living thing that is too small to see with the unaided eye, including bacteria, some fungi and many other organisms such as amoebas. Most consist of a single cell.

orangutan: One of the great apes (which also include gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos), this red-haired tree dweller shares 97 percent of its genes in common with humans. They can live for 60 years, with adults weighing 48 to 130 kilograms (105 to 286 pounds) depending on gender, age and health, with males being bigger. They have opposable thumbs (as humans do) and also opposable big toes, which aids in their gripping.

planet: A large celestial object that orbits a star but unlike a star does not generate any visible light.

pollutant: A substance that taints something — such as the air, water, our bodies or products. Some pollutants are chemicals, such as pesticides. Others may be radiation, including excess heat or light. Even weeds and other invasive species can be considered a type of biological pollution.

robot: A machine that can sense its environment, process information and respond with specific actions. Some robots can act without any human input, while others are guided by a human.

smoke: Plumes of microscopic particles that float in the air. They can be comprised of anything very small. But the best known types are pollutants created by the incomplete burning of oil, wood and other carbon-based materials.

surveillance: A term for watching or keeping track of the behavior of others, usually in a stealthy manner or from a distance.

tool: An object that a person or other animal makes or obtains and then uses to carry out some purpose such as reaching food, defending itself or grooming.

whale: A common, but fairly imprecise, term for a class of large mammals that lives in the ocean. This group includes dolphins and porpoises.

About Maria Temming

Maria Temming is the Assistant Managing Editor at Science News Explores. She has bachelor's degrees in physics and English, and a master's in science writing.

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