This use-case has its closest tie to the infrastructure inspection industry. Vertical structures such as bridge pylons, demand inspections that require physical contact from sensors (ultrasonic & eddy current). A sUAS can be equipped with these sensors to improve safety and efficiency over conventional methods that use specialized bucket trucks or require inspectors to repel down the structure. 

Retrieving physical items with a sUAS is likely the least common use-case. Despite its rarity in published literature, this use-case has the potential to improve areas tasks such as crop sampling. To ground-truth an area in a field a crop consultant would need to physically walk to that location and retrieve a sample of the plant. With sUAS, this process could be streamlined to where a sUAS is sent to retrieve the sample in place of someone walking to the location.

Many sUAS operators are leveraging this technology to transport and deliver physical items. This use-case applies to various industries ranging from healthcare, agriculture, and consumer products.