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.

Plastic pollution is worse than ever, with scientists recently announcing horrific levels of micro plastics found in Arctic sea ice, but innovative new ways of cleaning it up may give us a sliver of hope in this fight. A familiar googly-eyed sight in Baltimore for years now, floating plastic-cleaning devices known as ‘Mr. Trash Wheel’ and ‘Professor Trash Wheel’ are set to spread to new cities. Meanwhile, an environmental startup called Urban Rivers is gamifying pollution cleanup with a remote trashbot anyone can control from the internet.

Created by John Kellet, Mr. Trash Wheel and Professor Trash Wheel are a pair of solar- and hydro-powered water wheels based in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, collectively pulling millions of pounds of trash out of the water since they were first installed in 2014. Both designs feature ribbed white canopies that make them look like gigantic shellfish, an effect magnified by the addition of painted eyes. They’re operated as part of the Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor Initiative, and they’re so successful, people around the world are taking notice.

Each is capable of collecting up to 38,000 pounds of debris in a single day, sucking waste from the notoriously polluted harbor up a conveyer belt that leads to a dumpster barge. The collected material is then hauled away and separated by volunteers, with some of it incinerated to help produce electricity for the city of Baltimore. When the current isn’t strong enough to power them, the water wheels run on backup solar panel arrays.

If you’re wondering whether the trash wheels have ever picked up unintended objects, the answer is yes – once it caught a python, and another time, it drew a kayaker into its current.

On a much smaller scale, but still pretty cool, Urban Rivers’ Trash Robot encourages mass participation in trash cleanup, even from your couch. Spend just a couple minutes piloting the bot from your computer, anywhere in the world, and you’ll be adding to a collective effort while having some fun. Players navigate the bot toward floating trash and get points for snagging as much litter as possible within a set time period.

According to its creators, the biggest challenge in maintaining this project is preventing vandalism and theft of the bots, which they attempt to control with GPS trackers. The Chicago-based nonprofit demonstrated the project in June 2017 and continues to raise funds for future expansions.

A 13-foot-tall high-tech green wall encased in a concrete frame is capable of cleaning as much polluted air as an entire forest, combining the Internet of Things and biotechnology to collect data while it improves the urban environment. Created by Green City Solutions, the ‘tree’ isn’t really a tree at all, but rather a moss culture that removes dust, nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases from the air while also collecting weather data, providing electricity via solar panels and filtering its own rainwater.

Wifi sensors measure factors like temperature, water quality and soil humidity that help each CityTree self-regulate while also allowing the creators to measure how efficient it is at its job. Over a period of a year, each one can remove up to 240 metric tons of climate change-inducing CO2 from the air. Each one features a display for information or advertising. It also features optional benches on either side, and can be vandalism-proofed and customized according to a city or company’s needs. Green City Solutions takes care of the maintenance, and there’s a slim-line version measuring one square meter for smaller spaces.

Asia’s first CityTree went up in Hong Kong last summer, and around 20 others have been installed in cities like Oslo, Paris and Brussels. More are planned, but red tape tends to get in the way, stalling its growth to additional cities. The German-based company plans to introduce the CityTree to lower-income countries like India as well. While it’s definitely not enough to combat urban air pollution on its own, it’s an interesting element to integrate into a more comprehensive strategy.

It sounded kind of far away when announced in 2013, but German renewable energy firm Ubitricity’s plan to convert street lamps to electric vehicle chargers is now underway in London, making it easy to plug in just about anywhere in the Hounslow borough of the city. Owners of electric vehicles simply order a custom charging cable featuring a built-in electricity meter so they can take advantage of the discreet power outlets built right into the lamp posts as well as standard electrical outlets.

You might be wondering what’s to stop random passersby from plugging whatever they feel like into the outlets. The answer is that little box, which communicates with the power company to activate charging from the light pole. The lights themselves were converted to LEDs to draw less power, making more available for other purposes.

The meter allows for remote billing, monitoring your usage and reimbursing the person or company the outlet belongs to, making it easier (and more polite) to juice up your vehicle whenever and wherever needed. You can keep track of how much power you’re drawing, and how much it costs, on a smartphone app. Ubitricity believes this setup will give potential electric car owners more confidence in their ability to take their vehicles on the road for longer trips.

The integration with existing city infrastructure also makes sense, especially in areas where there’s no room for permanent charging stations. The lamp posts are already there, and there’s already power running through them, so adding an outlet makes it possible to simply pull over to the side of the road to charge. Electric car owners in the area can request that outlets are added to lamp posts near their homes.

What sounded like a long shot attempt to literally suck some of the suffocating smog out of China’s sky is actually working, according to updates on the Smog Free Project, which installed an air-vacuuming tower in a Beijing square. Created by Studio Roosegaarde, the tower has been up for over 40 days with China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection keeping track of the results. This week, they announced that the air around the tower is 55 percent cleaner than before after scrubbing 30 million cubic meters of air – equal to the volume of 10 Beijing National Stadiums.

The Smog Free Tower made its debut during Beijing Design Week 2016, with Studio Roosegaarde announcing plans to compress collected smog particles into ‘smog free’ jewelry as a tangible souvenir of the project. Standing 23 feet (7 meters) tall, the tower is the world’s largest air purifier, capable of capturing and collecting more than 75% of the pm2.5 and pm10 airborne smog particles and emitting a circular zone of clean air.

Six vents on each side of the super-sized purifier suck in air at a volume of 30,000 cubic meters per hour, about the size of 100 swimming pools, through a patented ionization technique that captures tiny particles without creating ozone in the process. The first tests in Rotterdam earlier this year showed that the filter cleaned surrounding air by 75 percent. Smog is much less of a problem there than it is in Beijing, so it’s no surprise that the machine didn’t do quite as well in China.

Daan Roosegaarde sees his creation as the beginning of a war on smog, indicating that larger towers are planned in the future and will be expanded to additional cities. One potential limitation may be that the filters are reportedly so expensive, the firm won’t reveal their cost – but all technology has to start somewhere, so maybe there’s a solution for that somewhere down the line.