Lockheed Martin MST. Much of the focus at Lockheed Martin has been on making drone piloting interfaces less like elaborate flight simulators. “Those of us in the aircraft business have to remind ourselves that the operator doesn’t really care about every little thing about the aircraft and wants instead to focus on the end result,” he said. “Operators want to see vehicle status information; they want to see video on their handheld device or their laptop.” “Technologically, most of the things that are needed for this are in place,” said Huber. He is working on a program that proposes using drones to inspect infrastructure – pipelines, telephone lines, bridges and so on. “We’ve developed an exploration algorithm where you draw a box around an area and it’ll autonomously fly around that area and look at every surface and then report back.” Huber, a senior scientist at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, where he works on 3D systems imagery, said with respect to a program like Amazon’s: “I have heard them say that many packages are lightweight – a drone can carry a kilogram for 15 minutes. If you have a vehicle that can go into a neighbourhood, it can deliver from that base. You need a 15-minute distance and typical off-the-shelf drones have about that distance.” It’s one way, he said, of making sure the surrounding population is relatively