While United Nations first responders race toward reports of a blazing fire in a Ford F-150 pickup truck, a drone quietly slips out of the truck bed to recon the scene ahead of arrival.
Before the F-150 gets to the scene, the drone is already relaying vital information to its colleagues on their smartphones: photos, heat maps, blueprints, etc. It quietly returns to the truck having done its work, unassisted.
This is the vision that carmaker Ford and drone maker DJI, the largest consumer drone company in the world, are crafting together.
Ford's concept, announced Tuesday, is to create a link between a smartphone, an F-150 Ford pickup truck, and a DJI drone.
But how does it work?
"Data will be relayed to the drone so the driver can continue to a new destination, and the drone will catch up and dock with the truck," Ford says.
The technology is intended primarily for natural disasters. The Ford truck gets driven into an emergency zone caused by an earthquake or tsunami, and the DJI drone gets launched into the air via Ford's touchscreen display. Passengers can view what the drone sees in real-time via a live stream on the car's touchscreen display.
The drone also takes aerial photos of the emergency zone and of any survivors, so first responders can send help with more information than they'd normally have.
It's a pretty great concept, except the technology isn't quite ready. Ford is offering $100,000 to anyone who can create the communication system necessary for the drone, truck, and smartphone to talk to each other in real time.
Drones have already played an integral role in search-and-rescue missions in the United States, though FAA regulations have stalled mass adoption. Since the FAA doesn't allow you to fly drones in emergency zones unless you get authorization first (in each, individual instance), drones are used infrequently in emergency situations.
