Ocean drones — Great ideas but another step towards less privacy?

Not long after Jeff Bezos introduced his highly ambitious plan for Amazon to deliver its orders using tiny human-less drone, there has been an increase in dsicussions towards the drones engineering. Given the highly sci-fi nature of the idea, the significant pick-up of interests in the subject is not unexpected at all. Bloggers and technology experts have little doubt that this technology will end up a real possibility one-day and it is not a matter of if but when. All of us know that should there be the biggest stumbling block, it would be us, human, and not the technology itself. For science geeks, the talk of drone isn’t limited to the sky though. News of US Navy’s exploration in using sea drones have recently emerged and it gets everyone talking. The level of controversy and excitement is comparable from what the Amazon drone idea has attracted. As always, military use is apparently the first beneficiary of any new technology and it’s evident from their already on-going attempt to use the ocean depth for their military advantage. It will only be several years from now before all the classified information is made known to us however for now, the geeks have been hard at work and let’s see what prediction they’ve produced.

One of the possible beneficiaries of this wonderful technology could be military intelligence gathering. Speaking of military intelligence, it is one area of application that can cover anything under the sun. An example that I can come up with would be to let these ocean drones wander around and conduct enemy surveillance. Nonetheless it might take many number of years before any military may come up with reliable sea drone detection because the countless number of marine organisms and their size non-uniformity will pose a great challenge for any detection to be reliable. Plotting the terrestrial layout of the enemy area may prove to be a far more interesting use case. As scary as it might sound, but if these sea drones are actually capable of obtaining such data, you never know what the next step will be.

Navigation aid is one neat use of the ocean drone technology that has been speculated by many science enthusiasts. Can you still remember the way the US Navy SEAL was able to secretly penetrate the hiding place of the world’s #1 wanted man, Bin Laden? I can not be sure if it is really the case but there were reports suggesting that the SEAL teams might swim across oceans if that proves to be the safest means of reaching the enemy target. I can imagine how the sea drones can be utilized to aid navigation in this instance and such information as the wave direction and velocity can be collected in advanced. With the accessibility of such data, the journey time can easily be reduced substantially and so does the danger.

Should there be a sci-fi idea that fascinates me as a science fan, it’d be the drone idea. But certainly, there are still huge gaps to be filled and countless questions to be addressed before we actually see every one of these ideas adopted into reality. Have you ever wanted your order may reach your home the moment you click the check out button? I certainly love the idea. I do not particularly like the darkness of the ocean however it is in this darkness that I believe lots of Mother Nature’s greatest treasures are still uncovered and just waiting to be discovered and I believe the sea drone takes us one step closer towards achieiving this.