BY ALLISON FONDER From Core77

The best and weirdest drone news of the year

The introduction of drones into the consumer market really only took place around this time last year, so 2016 could effectively be deemed the first year of the drone. And as drones proliferated into the mainstream, interesting, creative uses for the new technology were inevitable—thus resulting in a ton of interesting drone news as well as some pretty strange applications.

To sum it all up, here are a number of unconventional applications to 2016’s hottest new technology.

A Drone Scaled Up to Carry Humans

This year, a Chinese technology company called eHang released a video announcing their venture into creating an autonomous flying “drone” vehicle for humans. When we reviewed it earlier this year, the video had us highly skeptical…viewing it again, I must admit that not much in our minds has changed.

Conceptual Drones

As we peer into a future where drones will help consumers and federal institutions alike, this fascinating article written by discursive design professors Bruce and Stephanie Tharp helps us further examine the integration of drones into our public and private lives in the year 2016 by showcasing a number of engaging design projects.

Medieval Documentation Drone

Many people are still resistant to the integration of drone technology into our everyday lives. Once such group protesting the normalization of their flight? The Renn fair crowd.

Using a Drone as a Blender

What’s the best way to show your drone has the fastest, sharpest, most effective blades? You use the drone as a blender, of course. This year, Speed Motion Films used a DJI Phantom drone to try and blend pretty much anything that darn machine could handle.

Drone Vs. Raptor

While you may not be able to understand the audio in this, the objective is clear—governments around the world are preparing for the influx of unwelcome surveillance drones using a number of different methods. While the Dutch police are employing a few trained feathered friends to take go defense against the robots….

…the Tokyo police force is fighting fire with fire. After finding an authorized drone this year on the roof of the Japanese prime minister’s home and labelling it as a terrorist incident, the police started sending out federal drones flown by remote pilots to capture any unidentified flying objects.

The Killer Drone

This year, the Finnish are responsible for the #1 drone to haunt your dreams—introducing the Killer Drone, aka a large drone equipped with a remote controlled chainsaw. Yep, we aren’t sleeping a peep either after this one!

Flying Goth

And last but certainly not least of 2016, we have the fabricated drone created by Otto Dieffenbach back in March to resemble Gothminister singer Bjørn Alexander Brem. Ominously floating and flying around like Superman, this creation was certainly both extra spooky and totally excellent.

For more on this story and video go to: http://www.core77.com/posts/58993/2016-Marks-the-First-Year-in-the-Age-of-the-Drone?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+core77%2Fblog+%28Core77.com%29