Flybot for a day [Back Story]

When we picked unmanned aerial vehicles as one of the top technologies of the decade, Senior Editor David Schneider leaped at the chance to write about them. Schneider flies radiocontrolled model airplanes for fun, and he dearly wanted to see how they stack up against the multimillion-dollar drones flown by the U.S. Army and other militaries. To be sure, some differences are obvious: Hobbyists can't buy a plane capable of annihilating a small building in an instant, for example. But he was surprised to find that recreational model airplanes do have a couple of nice features not found in military UAVs. That became apparent, however, only after he saw the technology up close.