Gallery: Flying-Robot Cops, Farmers, and Oil Riggers Get to Work
Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP01ff-drones4-ss
 In 2004, when Idaho farmer Robert Blair wanted to see his legume and wheat fields from above, he paid $9,000 to rent a Cessna. It took three weeks to get the images back. Frustrated, Blair built his own 5-foot-long self-flying plane. Blair is one tech-savvy farmer. He had volumetric sensors installed on his combine harvester, and his tractor drives itself by GPS. But the thing that separates him from others in the "precision farming" movement is his unmanned air support. Blair's 1,500-acre spread is on rough terrain, in the hills and the mud of northwestern Idaho. Seeing the whole thing from the ground is next to impossible. The only way to catch the subtle changes in his chickpea or winter wheat crops is from the air. "It allows you to cover every square inch of field instead of cutting these random paths," he says. During peak growing season, Blair sends his 10-pound drone on a mission every week or two. The aerial images let him make decisions about when to spray for weeds and which wheat fields are looking nitrogen-deprived and in need of fertilizer. And he never has to wait for the photos. *Illustration: +ISM*
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 Phil Groves is always nervous getting into helicopters, especially after what happened to fellow biologists Larry Barrett and Danielle Schiff. On August 31, 2010, the two Idaho Fish and Game scientists took off from Clarkston, Washington, and began flying west over the Clearwater River, looking out their open doors for nests of threatened Chinook salmon. One of the biologists' clipboards broke free and hit the tail rotor. The helicopter plunged into a street, killing Barrett, Schiff, and the pilot. This wasn't the first time Idaho biologists had crashed while tracking wildlife from the sky. But the deaths finally motivated Groves—who studies environmental issues for Idaho Power—to look for a different way to count salmon. That December, he persuaded his bosses to buy a pair of hexacopter drones from MikroKopter. In fall 2011, he took the copters to the banks of the Snake River. Through the hexacopter's lens the salmon nests were obvious: long, lightly colored stretches against the dark riverbed. Unfortunately, the FAA caught wind of these experiments and grounded the drones. So this fall, Groves will once again climb into a helicopter and hope for the best. *Illustration: +ISM*
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 David Quinones runs the aerial photography company SkyCamUSA, which specializes in helicopter and plane shoots for everyone from Hollywood to real estate agents. For several years he also used drones. Quinones and his team could fly places—inside tunnels or close to structures—that no old-school chopper could manage. A slew of music videos, commercials, and reality shows were shot with his unmanned craft. For a Johnny Walker spot, Quinones used the biggest of his machines—a 4-foot-long custom-built helicopter—to take the viewer from the center-field stands of Yankee stadium all the way down to home plate. Then, in May 2011, the California Film Commission, citing FAA regulations, stopped issuing permits to drone-wielding directors. Quinones' real estate filming suffered a similar fate. For a time, realtors hired his unmanned aircraft to highlight luxury estates. "The best way to see these properties is from the air," Quinones says. "But the aerial views really suck from a regular airplane. You can only get so low and slow down so much." Drones provided a solution. Until that business was also grounded by authorities. *Illustration: +ISM*
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 Before you get too worked up about drones in law enforcement, remember: The NYPD already has manned surveillance helicopters that can see clear across the city. Drones are actually better suited to places like Mesa County, Colorado (population: 146,313), which maintains a fleet of two self-flying craft. One is a miniature hand-launched plane made by Falcon, the other an even smaller quadrotor drone made by Draganfly. "There's nothing they do that manned aircraft couldn't," says Ben Miller, the sheriff's department civilian who oversees the drone program. "We just can't afford manned aircraft." Miller's most notable mission came in June 2011, when the quadcopter helped search through a dense woodland for a stabbing suspect; turned out the guy was in the hospital. Since then things have been pretty slow. Layoffs have led to the remaining deputies being so overworked they haven't had the time to break out their surveillance drones. It's hard to be Big Brother on a small budget. *Illustration: +ISM*
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 In the oil-rich fields of Alaska's North Slope, gas flares burn constantly, occasionally bursting into fireballs two stories tall. It's a safety feature of BP's operation: burning off excess gas from drilling. Unless the facility is shut down—which costs BP millions—carrying out a detailed examination of those nozzles is out of the question. Which explains why the operation is inspected only once a year at the most. At least, that was the schedule until November 2011. As an experiment, BP brought in Greg Walker to fly a 2.5-pound Aeryon Scout quadrotor drone to examine the flares between inspections. With the Scout, Walker—manager of the Poker Flat Research Range for the University of Alaska Fairbanks—was able to spot a crack in one of the nozzles while it was still burning. Doing the repair required a shutdown, but BP was able to speed up the process and save money by ordering the parts ahead of time. *Illustration: +ISM*
