Drones will soon rescue people from fires and perform surgery

Drones are a controversial tech gadget to say the least. They can pose a risk to aircraft, cause potential privacy issues, and are being used to smuggle contraband into prisons. Despite their bad reputation, a lot of research is being put into the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) within emergency missions. At New York University's Abu Dhabi campus, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Antonios Tzes, has been manning a project across five different universities in the US, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Greece, to develop drones for use inside buildings, particularly in fire situations. After designing ground vehicles for rescue operations, Tzes and his team were looking for a way to move away from the ground. "We needed to go up into the air, in confined spaces, and drones were the logical way to do it," he tells the Standard.