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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Robots and Your Future

I’d like to bring to your attention an excellent article from yesterday’s USA Today announcing that the U.S. Air Force will begin deploying a new generation of pilotless airplanes over Afghanistan this fall.

According to the article, General Atomics, the manufacturer of the unmanned aerial vehicle known as the Predator—which, you may recall, played a vital role in hunting down a key al-Qaeda leader in the summer of 2006—will replace it with a newer version, dubbed the Reaper.

What is so significant about the Reaper is that it can reportedly fly three times as fast as the Predator, carry eight times more weaponry and stay aloft eight times as long as a manned F-16. That is an extraordinary amount of progress, and it is why one official quoted in the article said, “This is the future.”

Now, this analogy isn’t perfect, but as I mentioned in this article I wrote for the Motley Fool recently entitled, Planes, Trains, Automobiles ... and Robots; technological progress will not merely be limited to unmanned aerial vehicles, it’ll likely carry over to the field of robotics as well. The U.S. Defense Department has already publicly stated that it expects fully one-third of the fighting force in 2015—in just 8 years—to consist of robots! That is a sea change of historic proportions.

My broader point is that both robots and UAV’s are experiencing near exponential growth, and as they continue to improve these technologies will revolutionize warfare, law enforcement, and border security.

Moreover, when these advances are combined with the improved capabilities of Google Earth and Google Maps (for instance by using UAVs and robots to take and download pictures), it could also transform industries as varied as the real estate market and commercial delivery. (For example, if a UAV can fly eight hours and drop a bomb right on a terrorist’s head, why couldn’t FedEx start using UAV’s to deliver non-essential cargo?) These are the types of opportunities the Exponential Executive needs to begin thinking about today!

Jack Uldrich is a writer, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequenter speaker on future trends, innovation, change management and executive leadership.

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