discussion / Drones  / 15 October 2020

Towards a more ethical Indian drone industry

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My organisation (www.techforwildlife.com) recently put together a report on how the civilian drone industry in India could be encouraged to keep ethical considerations in mind while selling equipment or conducting operations. While this may appear only tangentially related to conservation, we believe that engaging with the industry itself is more likely to propagate 'good' behaviour in general, which will benefit conservation. Our report was recently released by WeRobotics; more information, as well as the report itself, are available at this link: https://blog.werobotics.org/2020/10/08/helping-ensure-ethical-indian-drone-operations/.

I'm curious as to know whether members of the WildLabs community feel that our approach may be applicable to drone industries in other countries as well, and would be happy to engage with any questions or comments on our work!




Hello Shashank, I found your post very interesting - congratulations on looking at the ethical side of this technology!  One of the reasons that our organisation, WildTrack, focuses on non-invasive wildlife monitoring technology is to avoid the ethical problems associated with disturbing animal behaviour, physiology and ecology. We're also using drones, both fixed wing and multicopter for monitoring and developing AI recognition algorithms, and trying to work out the optimal protocols for collecting data without any disturbance. I'd be interested to talk more with you about what you see as the major ethical challenges.