Abstract/Summary

We are in the midst of a global turn to the drone. In the context of the ‘unmanning’ of contemporary life, this article explores urban drone futures as they are speculated through the under-examined sites of patents and speculative design. Approaching the drone as it is anticipated, it examines the role of speculative visualizations in the fostering and constitution of urban drone imaginations and futures. While recognising growing scholarly attention to the drone as it manifests in increasingly diverse more-than-military contexts, it argues that there remains a need to expand the methodological toolkit employed in the drone’s study. Through the lenses of patents and speculative design, it calls for the diversification of both the sites through which the drone is approached, and the temporalities engaged in its critical accounting. Collectively, this article pursues an alternative political geography of the ‘domestic’ drone as it is actively imagined. It explores both the capabilities with which the anticipated drone is imbued, and the potential implications of dronified social relations and everyday life. Attending to patents and speculative design as anticipatory drone sources offers contribution to both drone geographies, drone methodologies, and political geographies of the robotic more widely.