Search results

This chapter explores how drones are used for morally controversial applications, while also interrogating the distinctiveness of these functions. It focusses on the uses of drones for purposes of human destruction, analysing documentary and film as insights into the impacts of such applications. In so doing, the chapter considers how drones change the nature of military conflict, creating even greater removal of the human subject from the location in which violence occurs. It also inquires into what it means when preparation for war is best achieved through experimental and playful enterprises, such as drone racing and gaming culture. Finally, the chapter documents some of the more harmful uses of drones in civilian crime and disorder contexts.

This chapter draws together the main themes of the book to outline some crucial trajectories in the development of drones. Notably, it investigates the process towards investing drones with trust in technical and moral terms, while also interrogating the utilisation of technology more broadly as a vehicle of furthering humanity's aims to demonstrate mastery over nature. Furthermore, it analyses the potential of developing fully autonomous drone systems and the consequences of establishing a drone highway. The book concludes by focussing on the presence of the machine as a new, companion species, which confronts humanity with new questions about its place in the world and its capacity to develop rich, meaningful relationships with artificial intelligence, of which drones are among the first examples.

This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the interdisciplinary literature on drones in last-mile delivery (LMD) to extrapolate pertinent insights from and into the logistics management field.

Rooting their analytical categories in the LMD literature, the authors performed a deductive, theory refinement SLR on 307 interdisciplinary journal articles published during 2015–2022 to integrate this emergent phenomenon into the field.

The authors derived the potentials, challenges and solutions of drone deliveries in relation to 12 LMD criteria dispersed across four stakeholder groups: senders, receivers, regulators and societies. Relationships between these criteria were also identified.

This review contributes to logistics management by offering a current, nuanced and multifaceted discussion of drones' potential to improve the LMD process together with the challenges and solutions involved.

The authors provide logistics managers with a holistic roadmap to help them make informed decisions about adopting drones in their delivery systems. Regulators and society members also gain insights into the prospects, requirements and repercussions of drone deliveries.

This is one of the first SLRs on drone applications in LMD from a logistics management perspective.

This chapter examines the catalysts that led drones to become a vast consumer market in a very short space of time. It tells the story of the drone’s resurgence as an object of popular desire and how this reflects a certain kind of technotopian allure, which is found more widely in the technological consumer culture. In so doing, it examines the historical origins of the drone across military aviation and musical culture, along with the major achievements in modern civilian drone exploration. The chapter also draws on literature in design theory, historical analyses of drone patents and speculative fictions within product development to articulate the central drivers behind the proliferation of drones in civil society.

This chapter examines the proposition that drone technologies are a force for good and discusses a number of applications that have become prominent within this category. It investigates how drones are being used within a growing number of sectors, including leisure, research, health, journalism, and sports, and analysing the development of such pursuits and their implications. It focusses on what resides behind the desire to re-characterise drones as objects of desire – and products more generally – and as vehicles for positive social change. Central to this chapter is the claim that drones are vehicles for asserting agency and competence over technology, but that there is also a trend towards the erosion of skills required to operate such devices, which undermines their overall evaluation has sources of empowerment.