Flying into the future

Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing experiment with their drone called 'throne'. [Photos by Kuang Linhua / China Daily]

5. A drone can herd animals: At the International Aerial Robotics Competition, held in August, teams from around the world were asked to get their drone to guide 10 smaller "sheep robots" into a designated zone using their drones, and avoid the four larger "wolf robots".

The drone herded the animals by flying down and touching the "sheep robots", making them change direction, says Li. None of the drones has been particularly successful.

In Northwest China's Alkin Mountains, drones have been used since December to monitor endangered wild yaks. The yaks walk out of sand hills every morning, drink and eat on a small oasis, and return to the hills. Drones follow them around, staying beside them like flies.

6. A drone can be an archaeologist or a treasure hunter: Between 1998 and 2000, the annual International Aerial Robotics Competition included a contest in which participants used an autonomous drone to fly into a collapsing tomb and take pictures of the treasures. It was performed with relative ease, Li says.

Wuhan University's archaeologists are using drones to survey the vast sites dating back to Shang Dynasty (16th-11th century BC) and Zhou Dynasty (11th century BC-256 BC) in Hubei province, and to build three-dimensional models with the data that drones provide.

7. A drone can help journalists: The journalism school at the University of Missouri in the US launched a drone journalism program in 2013. Journalism drones are being used by students at the university to gather video and photographs for stories relating to science, the environment and agriculture.

A US journalist covering the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 used a remote-controlled drone to capture videos of police cracking down on protestors. His drone, a modified Parrot AR 300, can be bought for about $300 on Amazon.com.

8. A drone can steal all your smartphone data: Drone maker Sensepost demonstrated their creation "Snoopy" at a conference in Singapore in March. The robot, named after the dog in the Peanut cartoons, can fly near a crowd and steal all the data from smartphones in the vicinity.

Identification information, passwords and banking data can all be accessed in an instant. "Snoopy" does this by impersonating a network that the phone has previously used, and automatically switches on the Wi-Fi.

"A drone is ultimately a platform that has infinite functions, depending on the tasks it is given and the tools that are added," says Li.

"There is no doubt that the era of drones has arrived."