How much of the Earth’s beauty – natural and human-created – do we miss every day, because it’s only visible from above? Photographer duo (and brothers) JP and Mike Andrews reveal some of the incredible sights and patterns that become apparent when viewed from the sky, calling their work “abstract aerial art.” Using a pair of drones called the DJI Phantom 4 Pro and DJI Mavic 2 Pro, the brothers find scenes that almost seem too perfect to be real.

It all began in 2016 when the UK-based photographers visited Australia and wondered how much more they could see of remote locations from overhead. They bought their first drone and headed to the outback, amazed by what they found.

“From the perspective of our drone, we saw the textures of the earth for the first time. The swirl of patterns, symmetry and colours. Instantly, we were drawn to the unusual sights we were witnessing from above. Each changing landscape exposed the truly weird and wonderful world we live in. The more we photographed them, the more we couldn’t believe what we were seeing!”

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A post shared by Abstract Aerial Art (@abstractaerialart)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Abstract Aerial Art (@abstractaerialart)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Abstract Aerial Art (@abstractaerialart)

“Pointing the camera on the drone directly downwards towards the earth, was the perspective that intrigued us the most. We referred to it between ourselves as the ‘topdown‘ perspective. It was a view that we had very rarely seen before and it really suited the types of images we were taking. We focused on shooting each landscape we discovered this way. Seeing the world from this angle, led us to compose our shots as if they were artworks rather than traditional photographs.”

Before long, they developed an eye for spotting locations that would reveal the most dazzling effects from that top-down perspective – roads overtaken by wind-blown sand, rainbow striped tulip fields, stacks of crates on barges that create cityscape shadows on the water, orderly parking lots and perfectly spaced beach umbrellas.

You can see more of their work on Instagram @abstractaerialart, and purchase prints on their website.

In Milan, the eyes and voices of immigrants, refugees and marginalized citizens take on a surprising form to interact with the public, telling people their stories. While drones are typically associated with surveillance, war and intrusion, here they become messengers in an attempt to cross cultural divides and encourage empathy.

Loro (Them), a live performance by New York-based, Poland-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, came to Italy for the first time on June 6-8, during Milan Photo Week, with support from non-profit public art organization More Art. The multimedia installation anthropomorphizes drones “to reclaim a broader conversation about technology’s relationship to humanity,” equipping them with screens that show only the eyes of people involved in the project. A megaphone-like mouth tells each person’s story as the drones fly at low altitude outside Milan’s Teatro Continuo Burri.

“Each drone represents a person, elaborating on the lived experience not only of immigration, but more generally of social and political marginalization, addressing highly topical issues such as cohabitation, citizenship, representation, and even hospitality. The title of the project Loro (Them) immediately emphasizes the distance that is created by those who are mistakenly considered different—highlighting the all too familiar ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ dichotomy. At the same time, the artist seeks to cancel this divisive space, putting audiences face to face, albeit virtually, with real stories and real individuals.”

For all their good intentions, the drones still have a bit of a disconcerting look to them, at least in the initial renderings, but they’re a tad less imposing in real life, as seen in this video by the Instytut Adama Mickiewicza. Whether there’s a disconnect between the stories of these so-called “invisible citizens” and the technology used to present them may depend on your personal view of drones. If you find them creepy, do you think that view would ease at all when they’re humanized like this?

Loro (Them) is just the latest thought-provoking project from Wodiczko, an internationally known artist, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and former director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and of the Interrogative Design Group at MIT.

“Throughout his career, Wodiczko has been instrumental in combining new technologies with art. Working with still images, video and audio, Wodiczko has become famous throughout the world for his large-scale public screenings of iconic buildings and monuments. Since 1980 he has created more than 90 screenings worldwide, including “Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection” in New York City in 2012 commissioned by More Art.”

Images of performance via Art Tribune

We haven’t quite reached the predicted point at which drones become an intrinsic part of our daily lives, but small autonomous flying machines are learning how to do a lot more than spook people with their surveillance potential and take amazing aerial photographs. Not that they aren’t still really good at both of those. A lot of the news we read about drone advancements is a bit dystopian, warning of the looming potential for wildly invasive policing and the kind of automation that seems to threaten jobs en masse. But drones are set to accomplish some pretty cool things, too – in addition to delivering packages and piping hot food faster than ever.

Search & Rescue Missions

Applications for drones in scenarios that are just too dangerous for humans to navigate seem to grow broader with each passing day. As engineers find ways for flying drones to bear more weight, fly with more precision and use sensors for the greatest possible accuracy, the machines are able to take on ever more complex tasks. Interesting new concepts like the NET GUARD, which can fly to high altitudes to catch people jumping from tall burning buildings, aim to test the limits of drone technology – but many designs are already out there saving lives.

Lifeguards in Australia just happened to be testing a new drone called the Little Ripper when a distress call went out. Two teenagers were drowning in the surf down the shore. The helicopter-shaped drone located the teenagers and dropped them a floatation device, which carried them back to shore. It’s equipped with an emergency kit, GPS beacons and a camera and has a 2.5-hour battery life. It was originally developed as a real-time shark detection system.

In Rwanda, a California startup called Zipline uses drones to send urgent medical supplies like blood to remote clinics and hospitals almost instantaneously. Even the most sensitive items can be shot off into the sky over the harshest of terrains with a range of 75km one way (about 46.6 miles.) Again, this isn’t theoretical – it’s in use right now, and expanding to new countries.

In Sweden, automatic external defibrillators (AED) are transported by drone to people experiencing cardiac arrest faster than an ambulance can reach them. Land Rover’s ‘Discovery’ vehicles have officially joined the Red Cross emergency response fleet, and each one comes with an advanced eight-rotor drone fitted with a long-range thermal imaging camera capable of spotting a person from over 1,440 feet away.

Saving the Lives of Animals

Drones are already helping scientists fight wildlife extinction. They’re more accurate at counting animals in the wild and generating data than people, they can monitor and assess dangerous situations like whales trapped in fishing nets and deliver the right supplies to human first responders and even watch out for poachers targeting perilously endangered species like rhinos. Drones equipped with medicated peanut butter pellets are helping scientists save the lives of the most endangered mammal in North America – the black-footed ferret – by feeding their favorite prey, the prairie dog, which has been dying from a deadly disease called sylvatic plague.

For a while, it seemed like efforts to use drones to save the lives of animals could be undone by scenarios in which they actively harm them instead. Dutch police got the bright idea to train eagles to take out suspicious drones that could be used to commit crimes, but people were concerned that the propellers could hurt the birds. As it turns out, the eagles weren’t particularly good at the job, and the program was suspended.

Augmenting Sustainable Technologies

Drones of various sorts could be deployed as tiny autonomous assistants for other forms of technology, helping to maintain complex systems or just making sure we don’t run out of juice in our electric cars while far away from charging stations. The Volt car-charging drone by Yeop Baek is a quadcopter that can be summoned by smartphone, allowing drivers to request a refuel no matter where they might be at the moment – a service that seems like it could be extended to gas cans for a greater number of drivers in the present.

A Latvian startup called Aerones is working on 28-motor quad copers designed to clean and de-ice massive wind turbines quickly and safely so they can produce maximum output. In some cases, drones could even outperform standard technologies, like the ‘Twing’ by Swiss startup Twingtec, a kite-like flying machine that can soar to high altitudes to harvest strong, steady winds, even when the air lower to the ground is still.

Drones could also collect data on weather, pollution, soil moisture, lava flows – you name it. They could help extinguish forest fires, map changes in forested areas and replace gas-guzzling agricultural machines, helping to reduce emissions. In fact, this last point connects to one of the best known uses for drones, one that’s usually pretty easy to make fun of – having whatever crap we want delivered to us on demand.

Convenience, Art & Fun

Amazon, UPS, Google and DHL are among the companies exploring ways to deliver packages via drones instead of trucks, and Uber Eats is getting ready to test food delivery drones with the aim of getting its “UberExpress” program off the ground by 2021. If having takeout and our latest Amazon Prime purchases dropped off on our doorsteps by drone seems like peak human laziness, consider how many delivery cars and trucks it could help eliminate on the road.

The Smithsonian did some research, finding that in some cases, using electric-powered trucks would be more efficient and easier, but in others, drones help reduce both energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. But the results really depend on how heavy the package is, where it’s being delivered and the locations of warehouses.

In any case, drones are almost ready to be omnipresent for all sorts of purposes, even if that means hovering over us to provide light or protect us from the rain, as in the case of designer Fabien Roy’s “Low Gravity” drone lamp or the “Free Parasol” by Asahi Power Service. They’re already helping artists produce incredible landscape photography, amazing illusions, massive murals and more. They’ve even been programmed to rain candy from hovering clouds on demand, an idea that kids came up with themselves.

All of these functions have come a long way in just a few short years, and it’ll be interesting to see how the technology progresses in the near future.

Does the idea of deploying robotic plants and animals in natural habitats to help save threatened species and reduce pollution make you feel better or worse about the state of the world? On the one hand, it’s kind of alarming that we’ve reached the point where we’re investing in bionic cockroaches and robot bees to make up for the destruction humans have unleashed upon the Earth. But on the other hand, recent advances in technology make it possible to explore, monitor and aid our environment in dazzling new ways, like using machine learning to predict the behavior of threatened species or interactive bio-tags to warn whales away from our ships.

High-Tech Bio-Tagging Systems

via GIPHY

The ‘Augmented Nature’ project helmed by a team of designers and engineers at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London aims to empower animals to thrive in their natural habitats and avoid threats of nearby humans. The team has developed two robotic bio-tags: one for the collard peccary, a type of pig that lives in the Amazon rainforest, and one for the humpback whale. In addition to passively gathering information on the animals, the tags actively aid them.

Using vibration, the bio-tags guide the peccaries to areas where they can dig wallows and disperse seeds, creating new habitats in safer areas away from destructive logging operations. Peccaries are crucial to both plant growth and amphibian habitats in the forest as they travel through the underbrush and roll in the mud.

The oceans have changed dramatically for humpback whales in the last century thanks to ship activities, pollution and ocean acidification, putting them at risk of ship collisions and disorienting them with the sounds of engines and other human activities. But these whales are essential players in ocean health, carrying nutrients from the depths where they feed back up to the surface to nourish phytoplankton, the basis of the entire food web. The Augmented Nature whale bio-tag integrates an underwater speaker to actively communicate with tagged whales, using sound to inform them about the positions of nearby ships.

Drone Bees & Other Synthetic Pollinators

Could pollinating robots really make up for the fact that bees are dying? Many scientists are skeptical, but the situation is desperate enough to give it a shot. Bee populations are plummeting, and without them, our crops are in serious trouble. The United States lost 44 percent of all honeybee colonies in 2016, and other species are near mass extinction. While it seems clear that we need to put a lot more effort into saving the living bees we still have, drones could help fill in the gaps in the meantime.

Pollinating robots are currently under development in a variety of forms, including insect-sized drones that use horse hairs coated with ionic liquid gel to mimic the biology of living bees, created by Eijiro Miyako, a researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Others aim to look a little more like real bees. Surprisingly, even mega retailer Walmart is putting a hat in the game; Walmart filed a patent for autonomous robot bees in March 2018.

Some people believe robotics could help keep bees alive, too. It seems like a sad reflection of the state of our world when we have to create artificial flowers to nourish bees because real ones are too covered in chemicals and mites. Artist Michael Candy built this conceptual Synthetic Pollenizer, a system of 3D-printed robotic flowers, which is installed alongside real plants to encourage bees to pollinate. Equipped with pollen and nectar, the machine feeds pollen collected from beehives into a synthetic stamen and then sends it through motors to regulate the amount of pollen on the ‘flower.’

“Bees are easily the most utilitarian pollinators used in industrial agriculture and they are suffering from a variety of environmental problems,” says Candy. “Perhaps in a future where designer crops are no longer able to produce pollen yet still receive it – then the Synthetic Pollenizer could rehabilitate the reproductive cycle of these genetically modified crops.”

Robotic Animals Document & Monitor Marine Life

A soft robotic fish named SoFi developed by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory swims alongside real fish to capture close-up footage without disrupting or alarming them. The robot has been tested at depths of more than 50 feet for up to 40 minutes in Fiji’s Rainbow Reef. Its silicone body is based on those of real fish to give it a natural swimming pattern, and its buoyancy is controlled by an adjustable weight compartment and ‘buoyancy control unit’ that changes the fish’s density by compressing and decompressing air. The team uses a waterproofed Super Nintendo controller to steer it.

It may not be quite as graceful as the real thing, but the MantaDroid by the National University of Singapore is pretty close to passing as its biological counterpart, at least from a distance. The droid is designed to aid in marine biodiversity studies – and also, unsurprisingly, to carry out underwater surveillance.

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Augmented Nature 6 Ways Robotics Are Aiding Conservation Efforts

Take some of the most alien landscapes on our planet, illuminate them in unnatural ways with the help of drones and the resulting images look like they can’t possibly be real. You can gaze at photo after photo in Rueben Wu’s ‘Lux Noctis’ series with a skeptical eye, certain that there’s digital trickery involved, but the the fact is, the ability to fly bright lights over darkened scenes allows us to see them in a whole new way.

Some of the mountains have halos; others seem like they’re lit on a soundstage for a motion theater production. The angles of the light, with no source apparent in the images, almost lend the photographs a miniaturizing tilt-shift effect. Wu takes inspiration from “ideas of planetary exploration, 19th century sublime romantic painting, and science fiction” for the series of award-winning landscapes.

Wu uses a light by Fiilex mounted on a GPS-equipped 3DR Solo UAV to achieve these effects. You can follow him on Instagram @itsreuben to catch fresh works as they roll in.

“In my visual work, I am driven not just by the urge to create imagery, but by a desire to explore new places as if they were unknown territory, constantly open to serendipity and with an eye for the unnoticed and the hidden,” reads Wu’s website. “Photographs, like music, can create an echo of a time and a place. To me, my images are more than pictures. They are fragments of memory and imagination.”