The 2016 United Arab Emirates Drones for Good Competition is now open. The UAE Drones for Good Award is “dedicated to transforming the innovative technologies behind civilian drones into practical, realizable solutions for improving people’s lives today.”
In 1888 a French newspaper published this in Alfred Nobel’s obituary: “Le marchand de la mort est mort. (The merchant of death is dead.)” It explained that Alfred Nobel had become rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before. But the newspaper was mistaken. It was Alfred’s brother Ludvig who had died.
Alfred Nobel was horrified by his premature obituary. Despite having established 90 arms factories, he believed in pacifism. When his younger brother Emil died in a nitroglycerin explosion, Alfred worked to invent safer explosives such as dynamite. He did not want to be remembered as a merchant of death.
So Alfred Nobel revised his last will and testament to leave his entire remaining estate to establish Nobel Prizes which were to be given “…to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.”
The UAE drones for good competition has a similar goal of rewarding those who can imagine drones being used as plowshares instead of as swords. As of this writing the UAE drones for good competition has received 800 individual entries from 57 countries. The prize for the national competition is 1 million AED and the prize for the international competition is 1 million US dollars.
Greenprophet previously reported on some positive uses for drones in nature conservation, watching flamingos and delivering the mail. Watch this video for another example of drones being used for good.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCCODBs3F8g[/youtube]
How would you use drones to make the world a better place?
Photos of Mishaal Almarzouqi’s team and other photos are from https://www.dronesforgood.ae
Author: Brian Nitz
Brian remembers when a single tear dredged up a nation's guilt. The tear belonged to an Italian-American actor known as Iron-Eyes Cody, the guilt was displaced from centuries of Native American mistreatment and redirected into a new environmental awareness. A 10-year-old Brian wondered, 'What are they... No, what are we doing to this country?' From a family of engineers, farmers and tinkerers Brian's father was a physics teacher. He remembers the day his father drove up to watch a coal power plant's new scrubbers turn smoke from dirty grey-back to steamy white. Surely technology would solve every problem. But then he noticed that breathing was difficult when the wind blew a certain way. While sailing, he often saw a yellow-brown line on the horizon. The stars were beginning to disappear. Gas mileage peaked when Reagan was still president. Solar panels installed in the 1970s were torn from roofs as they were no longer cost-effective to maintain. Racism, public policy and low oil prices transformed suburban life and cities began to sprawl out and absorb farmland. Brian only began to understand the root causes of "doughnut cities" when he moved to Ireland in 2001 and watched history repeat itself. Brian doesn't...
