TWT truly reaches new heights in this episode as George and Tamara research both air travel and drones. Our two favorite park planners, realizing they need to look into different modes of travel for The Park of the Future, look into various innovations happening in the airline and drone industry. They discover that airlines like Allegiant are making flights more accessible to rural communities, which will make the future park more accessible to people out of state. And, when they look into drones, they realize they would make a great addition to the park as well- both as a form of security and an interactive exhibit within the park. But you may also be surprised to learn that drones are being used for much more than just security nowadays:

Delivering Small Items

In more recent years, companies like Amazon have begun experimenting with sending smaller packages via drone. To give you some perspective on size, the technology that we currently have available could be used to deliver a couple of large pizzas to your doorstep at a much faster pace than normal delivery. We’re still a ways away from making this a mainstream occurrence, and it likely won’t be used to deliver the vacuum cleaner you ordered online anytime soon, but we may see this being integrated with food delivery apps at some point in the future.

Capturing Live Events

That’s right, you have drones to thank for those cool aerial shots of concerts or speeches. Prior to the days of drones, aerial shots of events were done using cables. While this worked at the time, it only provided a limited view since the camera could only move back and forth along the cable. Now, thanks to drone technology, cameras can move in any direction and capture every angle.

Movies and Commercials

Speaking of drones having 360-degree capturing abilities, another big use for drones in the past decade is to obtain shots for our favorite films. Prior to drones, aerial shots in films were done either with a cable or on a helicopter. Now, because of drones, filmmakers can obtain aerial shots that are lower than a helicopter can read and with a wider range of view than one could achieve on a cable. So many films have employed this technique over the past decade, from Skyfall to Jurassic World and even Captain American: Civil War.

Protecting Wildlife

We all know the importance of protecting our environment and wildlife, but we never thought the help for that would come in the form of a flying robot. It can be hard for humans to keep an eye on different environments and species without doing more harm than good by disturbing them. However, thanks to drone technology, we can fly over these environments without disturbing them and use the cameras to check on them and make sure they’re continuing to thrive.