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Renault, the French multinational vehicle manufacturer, recently unveiled the Renault KWID, a concept off-road car equipped with a built-in drone quadcopter. Renault has taken it upon itself to take the drone craze to another level. Few would have thought up an automobile UAV crossbreed, but this is exactly what the manufacturer has done. Next to cars, vans, trucks, tractors, tanks, buses, coaches and auto-rail vehicles, UAVs will now don its conveyor belt assembly lines.

The built in drone launches from the rear part of the roof and can be operated either with a tablet inside the vehicle, or following a pre-programmed flying sequence and GPS coordinates. Why would you want launch a drone from the roof of your car you ask? A number of reasons. You could use it to scout traffic to navigate your way out of a jam, or detect obstacles on the road ahead of you and avoid a jam altogether. You could also possibly use it to take aerial shots or video footage.

Combat drones have been in service for quite some time now, primarily in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. There have also been a few instances where journalists and news agencies have utilized them to capture footage of demonstrations. There have been whispers of their potential use, amid much controversy, within cities by policemen and law enforcement agencies to maintain order, and they've only recently been given serious consideration, beyond theory, into the commercial application.

Amazon Prime is probably the most notable example. The e-commerce giant recently unveiled its plans for an unmanned drone delivery service, branded Amazon Prime Air. The project is still experimental though for now, and for some quite a while it seems. CEO Jeff Bezos estimates that such an endeavor might bear fruit sometime in the next 4 to 5 years.

More recently however, and much closer to home, engineers in the United Arab Emirates have been testing drones to deliver official government documents. Just two days ago, the UAE government unveiled the prototype, seen below.

The drones will use Google maps to identify addresses. While CNN says that fingerprint recognition technology will be used to confirm a recipient's identity, the Verge claims that the drones will use retina scanning. The plan is to test the system for six months in Dubai, before expanding it to the rest of the country within a year. The UAE government has even called on companies, universities, creative individuals and specialized professionals to participate in a $1M drone design competition.

And since we’re on the subject of whacky cars, you might also be interested to know that Google patented an ad-powered taxi service that would offer free rides to shoppers, the same company that has spent a ton of money developing its self driving cars.