the.com/drone
a robot that learned to fly before it learned to drive
means A drone is an unmanned aircraft flown by remote control or onboard software, or (older sense) a continuous low humming sound, or a male bee that does no work but mate with the queen.
from From Old English 'dran' or 'dren,' the male honeybee — a stingless, idle creature whose only job was mating, and whose deep buzzing gave us the second sense: a low, steady, monotonous hum. The lazy-bee meaning bled into 'drone' as a word for a freeloader. The flying-machine sense is a 20th-century arrival, possibly named for the buzzing engines of early radio-controlled aircraft, with a likely nod to the 1930s British 'Queen Bee' target drone — the unmanned aircraft buzzing dutifully toward the guns.
- name origin
- named for male bees that do nothing but mate
- war debut
- WWII target practice for trigger-happy gunners
- package delivery
- now drops burritos faster than traffic allows
- record altitude
- solar drones loiter above weather for months
- light shows
- thousands replace fireworks with silent choreography
dji phantom 4 — world's best-selling consumer drone with over 3 million units sold since 2016
mq-9 reaper — us military's primary armed drone, deployed since 2007 in afghanistan, iraq, yemen
anafi — parrot's compact foldable drone released 2018, competitor to dji mavic series