The Cheltenham Science Festival took place recently and here is Asa C's (Year 12) report on the festival:
"I watched the 'Dancing with Drones' talk on Sunday 7th June at 12pm. It was quite a spectacular talk about all aspects of drones including their applications, benefits, drawbacks and some examples of their use. One benefit being, drones have been recently used in rural areas to spray disinfectant in order to help protect everyone from the coronavirus. However, the speaker, Andy Miah, cited Stephen Hawking warning to us that artificial intelligence could end mankind. Additionally, he mentioned that he has a weird sensation that it's a human behind the machine, but more like a ghost, controlling what the machine does. Including the concept of machines becoming as intelligent as humans. The idea of drones was initially introduced a decade ago and no one would have imagined how developed they have become and what they have been used for in recent years; such as, the 2018 Olympics in South Korea where they performed an opening ceremony with drones and used them to create a light show ending with the drones lined up to form the five rings that represent the Olympics logo. On the other hand, drones have caused many issues. One being the entire Gatwick airport was grounded due to drones flying to close to the planes and one was found to crash land in the White House grounds. Although there have been many beneficial uses of drones such as, the SnotBot dron that swoops over blowholes of whales to track their health by collecting a petridish of the snot for analysis."