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African Experiments With Drone Technologies Could Leapfrog Decades of Infrastructure Neglect

posted by chromas on Monday September 24 2018, @01:44PM   Printer-friendly

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Countries across the continent are experimenting with this 21st century technology as a way to leapfrog decades of neglect of 20th century infrastructure.

Over the last two years, San Francisco-based startup Zipline launched a national UAV delivery program in East Africa; South Africa passed commercial drone legislation to train and license pilots; and Malawi even opened a Drone Test Corridor to African and its global partners.

In Rwanda, the country's government became one of the first adopters of performance-based regulations for all drones earlier this year. The country's progressive UAV programs drew special attention from the White House and two U.S. Secretaries of Transportation.

[...] After several test rounds, Zipline went live with the program in October, becoming the world's first national drone delivery program at scale.

"We've since completed over 6000 deliveries and logged 500,000 flight kilometers," Zipline co-founder Keenan Wyrobek told TechCrunch. "We're planning to go live in Tanzania soon and talking to some other African countries."

[...] In a non-delivery commercial use case, South Africa's Rocketmine has built out a UAV survey business in 5 countries. The company looks to book $2 million in revenue in 2018 for its "aerial data solutions" services in mining, agriculture, forestry, and civil engineering.

[...] The continent's test programs — and Rwanda's performance-based drone regulations in particular — could advance beyond visual line of sight UAV technology at a quicker pace. This could set the stage for faster development of automated drone fleets for remote internet access, commercial and medical delivery, and even give Africa a lead in testing flying autonomous taxis.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/16/african-experiments-with-drone-technologies-could-leapfrog-decades-of-infrastructure-neglect/

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:23AM

    by khallow (3766) on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:23AM (#740029) Journal

    But, no matter how dirty you might be, you can't justify it with the trash that flows through your jail.

    Ultimately, either something is done about that trash or they become the new police with a different take on what they can justify. A world where the good guys are required to commit suicide for the sake of ethics is not a viable one.

    And, no, you can't justify any of it. The best you can offer is "might makes right".

    That's where we're heading with this argument. If your "police", crooked or not, isn't willing to do the job of defending the weak, it's might makes right.

    As to what I can justify, you're looking at two basic choices with something like Communism (and any similar domination ideology like some flavors of Islam), submission or fighting back. The US choose to fight back. That we're still alive (large scale nuclear war being one of many possible bad outcomes) and mostly free (1984 being another) means they did a lot of things right.