Drones are multiplying in numbers and have become quite popular and are now being equipped with technology that can save lives. In the past year, drones have helped save 65 lives across five continents. The thermal imaging technology can help firefighters with wildfires by spotting hot-spots when it's dark, finding out the directions and rescuing people. "The thermal capability itself is not that new but having it fully interrogated into our drone system and providing that data live to the operator and incident command is new and powerful and that's where the power of the technology comes to shine," says Romero Durscher the Director of Public Safety Integration for DJI. "Say someone is up in the mountains and you can't get to them right away, the drone can be used to get them a medical pack, food, or water and drop it for them," says Tom Jackson the VP and GM for Aeryon Defense.

The use of drones is already growing across various sectors but an Ajman-based start-up -- Deep Aero -- is fuelling an autonomous drone economy driven by artificial intelligence and blockchain. Gurmeet Singh Anand, CEO of Deep Aero, told Gulf News that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is increasing exponentially. "In the coming future, we will see millions or billions of commercial drones flying in the air. When that happens, there has to be an autonomous system to manage the drone traffic. Otherwise, it will be a nightmare for regulators," he said.

Matt Pickett, Founder of the nonprofit, Oceans Unmanned, holds a DJI drone that will assist in the disentangling of humpback whales in Hawaii. In April 2018, the Washington Post reported that a sperm whale was found dead off the coast of Spain with 64 pounds of plastic debris in his stomach. Each fall, pods of endangered humpback whales numbering around 10,000, make their 3,000-mile journey towards Hawaii to winter over in the warm waters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. Along the way, these whales encounter man-made environmental hazards such as fishing gear lines and marine debris which become tangled around the whale's body and fins cutting into the whale's flesh and sometimes even dragging them down to the bottom of the sea where they drown. The work to untangle a 45-foot, 40-ton whale is dangerous to both the rescue team and the whale.

Intel's latest drone trick is on the cover of Time. Err, it is the cover of Time. The magazine's most recent issue features special reports on UAVs, and rather than, say, featuring a photo of Intel's drone team on the cover, as PetaPixel notes, the publication's iconic red border and logo is made up of 958 of Intel's light-show drones themselves. That number is slightly lower than the amount used in the Olympic opening ceremony earlier this year, but it's no less impressive. The swarm was 100 meters (around 328 feet) tall, and hovered over Folsom, Calif.

With the growth of the unmanned aerial vehicles in the different sector and especially in the military department, the Navy plans to establish a command devoted to aviation drones. According to OPNAV instruction, Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Two Four (UX24) will come into existence at Webster Outlying Field in Maryland, and this mission would be involving aspects like providing research, testing, development and other major support for Navy and Marine Corps drone systems. "The mission is currently performed by Naval Test Wing Atlantic, but growth in the field requires a command solely focused on the aviation drone mission," states OPNAV. Under the sea drone will also very soon come into existence.

Kansas State University Polytechnic Campus partners with Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism to send some of their employees and law enforcement officers to attend UAS Commercial Remote Pilot Training and be eligible to sit for the FAA exam to become certified remote pilots. "We're extremely proud to be selected as the UAS training provider for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism," says Kurt Carraway, executive director of Kansas State Polytechnic's Applied Aviation Research Centre. "The UAS training will help our law enforcement officers ensure safety across the state by being able to conduct search-and-recovery efforts more efficiently with UAS," says Susan Steffen, fisheries biologists for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism.

This September, delivery drones will begin to fly the friendly skies of Vanuatu. And this isn't a one-shot demonstration, like many of the stunts we've seen from the likes of Amazon and Google. This is an attempt to make drones part of the medical infrastructure. The South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, a string of 83 volcanic islands spread over 1600 kilometers (995 miles), has just issued a "request for tender" to drone companies around the world. The companies are invited to submit bids for bringing vaccines to scattered hospitals and health clinics on three islands.

According to KQED News, the California Institute of Technology Researchers have designed a 1/5th scale autonomous drone ambulance and hopes to create a car-size rescue pod. From past two years, the drone ambulance has been worked on and the final goal is an emergency car that could transport at least one person. The California Institute of Technology also announces plans to install sensors inside the drone to monitor a patient's vital signals. The motive behind the innovation and designing of the self-flying drone is to rescue a single person in areas where first responders can't reach or have trouble reaching. Moreover, the AI system will be created to pilot a patient to safety.

Catching a wildlife poacher in the act is a tricky business. Just ask the officials and groups who have spent decades and millions of dollars searching for criminal animal hunters and traders operating covertly from South Africa to China. Their work is complicated by several factors, from government corruption that foils anti-poaching efforts to extreme poverty that draws people into the industry in the first place. Poachers tend to go about their illicit business under cover of night, and it's hard to find people among millions of square miles of pitch-black forest. "Eighty percent of poaching happens under the cover of darkness."

The above video was provided by Intel. If you're a six-foot human standing on a paddleboard, it's just as well you don't know that a 60-foot, 40-ton humpback whale with 16-foot flippers is surfacing directly beneath you. The only thing more unsettling would be if there were four 60-ft., 40-ton humpback whales with 16-foot flippers doing the same. Just such a don't-look-down moment played out off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 2016. Ordinarily, it would have been the kind of experience that the paddleboarder--who came through unharmed--would have described to his friends with a helpless "You should've seen it."