SAF 603 "Autonomous Flying Vehicles" Jan 1996
ALAN ALDA:Do you think 20 years from now there will be some aerial robot that will be working -- ROB MICHELSON: I think so, yes. ALAN ALDA:-- and out there doing something? What do you think it will be doing? ROB MICHELSON: It will probably be doing what we call D-cubed, which is Dull, Dirty and Dangerous jobs. The dull jobs are jobs where you've got to go out and inspect things for hours on end. They're very expensive to put a man in a helicopter to go look for beetle damage in pine trees. But you can send one of these vehicles out and let it fly all day long, taking data, looking for dead pine trees. The dirty part has to do with going into places where you don't want to send a man; say into an area like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl to get air samples. ALAN ALDA: Or to rescue somebody. ROB MICHELSON: Or to rescue someone. That's right. And you would never want to do this with a manned vehicle because you'd put two people in jeopardy then if it's a rescue mission. So Dull, Dirty and Dangerous I think embodies the kind of missions that we'll see unmanned aerial vehicles doing in the future.
