ABSTRACT
We know the trajectory of drone technology as aerospace history has already laid it out. Aerospace is an infrastructure, albeit an invisible one, fundamental to our urban ontology. UAS operates at a unique ‘hover space’ above ground, below light aircraft, closer than satellite, it is a valuable tool for remote sensing. The possibilities of vertical urbanism as a powerful agent in communicating spatial relations are critically important. Drone AI can be a social good in the simulation of urban environments for the management and decision-making support in smart cities (Ghallab, 2019). The growth of VTOL and an urban traffic management system provides the regulatory environment for the ‘Hover Space’ for UAS systems including drone delivery and logistics to enable new aerial mobility. These are some of the nodes of development for drone futures but there are also several challenges to these areas. Drone Futures seeks to conclude with a series of open questions about the positive agency and social good that UAS bring to the places and cities of tomorrow. This agency is mapped using an adapted Joseph Voros futures cone (Voros, 2003). Futuring frameworks are useful strategic approaches to key challenges including climatic breakdown and mapping trajectories for post-carbon futures. UAS may be critical for mitigation and conservation of these effects, as mediums and cyber-physical systems capable of sensing and directing bio-remediation technologies. UAS gather GIS data and can react to reforestation, through air seeding and natural agri-sprays amongst many other possibilities (Um, 2019). Drones as cyber-physical systems may also direct responsive architecture that repurposes structures for environmental comfort and sustainability.
