The UNICEF Innovation team has given me this awesome opportunity
to conduct further research on drones.
Drones are technically
unmanned aerial vehicles. What's really great is I get to explore the use cases
and future possibilities.
People like Pia are young, creative
and not bogged down in the bureaucratic day-to-day that can really
stifle creative thinking in the organization.
She's as free to go as far crazy she wants to go.
Okay, we're going to try flying a monkey.
One of the first drones that I ever flew was the AR drone by Parrot,
and it was a really great introduction
to the wonderful world of drones. I began to wonder what
else could I do. I could only take photos and videos with this drone,
and I wanted to do more. My idea was to create a modular 3-D printed drone.
Being able to put different modules in and out easily would allow you to
accomplish more than one mission.
So right now I'm just doing the finishing touches
on the module that carries lab samples.
When you say the word drone,
what comes to my mind is a
grainy grey screen with the little target in the middle and something blowing up on the other end.
What we're doing is so different. What we're really exploring
is how drones can save lives.
We're looking at lifting humanitarian goods.
We're looking at supply chain stuff, so transporting blood tests, some new
development health-related activities.
We're looking at drones providing connectivity, so
cell phone networks or wireless networks that you can deploy
with a mobile flying network.
My family is from the Philippines,
and I'm really passionate about this project just because of everything that
happened with Typhoon Haiyan.
Though there's more development that needs to take place in order to make
this hardware and software more user-friendly,
once it becomes more user-friendly, emergency responders are going to be
able to do what they do faster and more efficiently.