I actually own and use drones for these things:
Scouting out roads/hiking-biking trails/camping spots/photog raphy spots. The drone has saved a good bit of time, and kept me from going down some real nasty roads for no payoff or just regular roads that dead end somewhere that has no view, or already has someone parked at. Similarly my ebike is also helpful for scouting out roads to see if it's worth taking the van down. Yes, I'm conscious of drone laws and how obnoxious they are, I do my best to minimize noise and am careful about not bothering people, people deserve to hear nature in nature.
Figuring out if I have to clean the gutters again.
Make friends.
One time I used it as a birds eye view with VR(ish) goggles for fun. It was fun, it was awful.
Take pictures of a friend's van's solar installation for insurance purposes.
Things I do that aren't weird:
Take aerial photography/videography.
Fly around and have fun.
I may use a drone for the following, but have yet to:
Get a different view to see if I'm gonna run the van into tree limbs, rocks, etc.
Fly a cup of sugar to a neighbor who would like to borrow some.
Have an outdoor "ceiling" light.
If it was a one time thing, some tape and string, I'd just hover it and they'd snip it.
If this was something I wanted to do frequently, there are fairly cheap attachments that you can drop things with, which would be more fun, and I wouldn't have to worry about the person snipping the string tugging it and causing danger to themselves and/or the drone.
They're a battery, little servo to move a pin, and usually a photosensitive trigger, and you can drop things by turning the auxiliary/landing light on or off.
Here's the first Amazon result for that type of device it's $37 and has a max payload of 500 grams.
Are we talking flying drones only? Because i have a vaccum cleaner and mop that is basically a little ground drone to clean up my messes. I can even take over control and "fly" it with the camera feed.
I often get stuck waiting for a train on my way to/from work. I’ve often wanted to have a drone so I could figure out how long I’d have it wait, and see if it’s worth it to go around.
I personally want to have an automated camera-turret guided by microphone triangulation, and small fleet of drones that will launch when any loud car is detected driving in my neighborhood past 10PM that will both collect video evidence of their license plate, the driver's face, and hopefully scare the living shit out of them as punishment for disturbing my beauty sleep.
I did that once, albeit walking, not driving, and the drone had no auto flight programming. It was really hard to do anything more than walking on flat ground. Bumpy ground, difficult. Try to grab something on a shelf, difficult. This was a few years back, so tech is better, having auto follow would free up some brain power, but it'd still be real rough.
There's a video of a bunch of soccer players trying to play using VR and a camera above the field, it's got some funny moments.
They did that with a 30-40 foot stick a few years ago, and the initial attempts by the driver were hilarious. They didn't show improvement because I'm sure it wouldn't be as funny, but I think we all forget how difficult it first was to match up how far to push the stick left or right for a particular turn. Now imagine an actual wheel.
Dashcams (or rather fancy backup+ systems) already do this! They take 4 or more cameras, assume the top of your car is bland, and stitch them together. Super cool tech.
We played a game with our Cub Scouts where they would set up a pyramid of red plastic cups in a field and then fly a drone equipped with a release mechanism to drop a ball from as high as they wanted to take it and see how accurate their aim was. Their aim was terrible and hilarious and they ended just running through the cups and throwing them at each other, but loved thinking about where to position the drone and ask about doing it again a lot.
If the drone could fly around the city autonomously, I would use it to digitize my city and get a personal Google Street View on steroids. I already use drone shots for structure-from-motion projects, but it would've to be autonomous for such a large-scale operation
I do this too, air 2s. I have to do the pics anyway. So much easier than camera + tripod + timer. I'm one of the taller ones too so I can stand in the back with the remote behind someone else.
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