Over a hundred years ago, Henry Ford established Ford Motor Company with a staff of only 10 people. Henry pioneered the idea of using an assembly line to produce a car, creating the first affordable American car. Today, Ford Motor Company is the second largest automotive group in the United States and the fifth largest in the world, employing close to 213,000 people at 90 plants world wide. The company manufactures around 25 car models now, but over the years they have ventured into other fields as well. As stated on the company website, “Since 1903, Ford Motor Company has built iconic vehicles, including Model T, Continental, Mustang, F-series, and Bronco. We have also manufactured many other products, such as airplanes, radios, refrigerators, postal machines, and weather satellites.” In an effort to stay on the cutting edge of technology and industry, Ford has now begun looking into drone technologies.

On October 9, 2019, Ford Motor Company was awarded a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a drone that could be deployed directly from a vehicle. In statement released by the company they explain what led them to wanting to incorporate a drone in their line up. “At Ford, we recognize that people are using drones in fascinating ways: to monitor crops in agriculture, gather information for disaster management, and in the inspection of buildings or other infrastructure. Our customers are beginning to think about drones as tools to help get their jobs done, the same way they think about their vehicles. As researchers, we were intrigued by the relationship between our vehicles and drones and how we might serve our customers in the future, so we embarked on a mission to find out more.” For Ford, they envision a drone that fits into the lifestyle of their vehicle’s drivers. Whether it be an emergency vehicle, or civilian SUV, truck, or sedan, the drone would be able to assist the driver in a number of ways.

Many US emergency departments rely on Ford vehicles for their squads. These same departments, like police and fire departments, have been rapidly developing drone programs. Drones have become critical tools as they allow officers to serve their communities with higher degree of accuracy while keeping officers safe. The drones are deployed from centralized locations, or kept in portable cases to be brought to a desired scene. Drones have allowed officers to reduce their response time tremendously, but what if that time could be even further shortened? If a police cruiser has a drone that can be instantly deployed from a rack on the car, the drone can be instantly used to track a suspect, report to a crime scene, record evidence, and more.

The growing drone market isn’t only for emergency personnel. The FAA estimates that there will be nearly 4.3 million drones bought by hobbyists by the end of 2020. The commercial drone industry has been exploding as well. The drone patent developed by Ford could be used to assist a driver in the event of a roadside breakdown by being a beacon to first responders. If a car is traveling in a poorly lit rural environment, the drone can fly ahead of the car to illuminate the way to safety. Many commercial drone operators like farmers, or construction workers for example, rely on Ford’s line of trucks to get jobs done. These trucks could now incorporate a drone seamlessly into operations.

Another unique aspect of Ford’s drone patent is that it includes a way for drone IDs to be recognizable, a major FAA concern. The FAA requires all commercial drones to have a 10 digit ID number displayed on the body of the drone. However, for authorities to read this number they need to be close enough to the drone, not an ideal situation for a drone while in flight. This has become just another hindrance on the road to approved BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line Of Sight) drone operations. “Therefore, we looked at using the anti-collision lights that several drones offer to improve their visibility during nighttime operations,” said Ford research manager John Luo and scientist Adi Singh. “Our patent-pending idea is to use the lights to broadcast a drone’s 10-digit code in an ASCII-encoded binary signal at a baud rate — one that could be synced for consistency across the system to ensure universal compatibility.”

Ford has not announced plans for when a working prototype will be released. They did say that their patent would allow drones to be deployed from any vehicle in their lineup. The patent provides Ford with a way of securing the intellectual concept behind their drone program that they will continue to develop. “As drone adoption accelerates,” Luo and Singh said, “we think many of our customers will want to use these devices as part of their lifestyle, whether to pursue hobbies or even as a tool for their business — no different than how they use an F-150 or Transit on a job site. By conducting in-house research in this emerging area while simultaneously participating in the regulatory conversation at the federal level, Ford is laying the groundwork to make sure our vehicles can deliver the right experiences to our customers as we transition to a smart world.” As Henry Ford famously said, “The only true test of values, either of men or of things, is that of their ability to make the world a better place in which to live,” the possibility of enabling drones to be deployed from a car could definitely make the world a better place.