Commercial Drone Industry Heating Up 68
DeviceGuru writes "In light of the FAA's recent approval of two unmanned drones for commercial operation in U.S. airspace, it's interesting to see the bits and pieces for building commercial UAVs falling into place. For example, Airware demonstrated its line of autopilot computers for UAVs this week at AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2013 in Washington DC. The devices include multi-rotor capabilities, and support various radios, GPS and inertial systems, servo interfaces, and onboard interfaces such as USB and CAN. The autopilot controllers run a configurable, royalty-free AirwareOS embedded Linux OS, making them amenable to considerable customization. Adding to that, Airware recently received $10.7 million in funding from Google Ventures and several other investors. This raises the question of what's next for the fledgling commercial drone industry."
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Aerial photography, surveying, temporary communications relays for large gatherings (sports events, concerts and such - hover a few cellphone stations over the crowd), traffic monitoring/reporting, security.
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, what is the point of "commercial" drones?
(If they are to be used for Law Enforcement and anti-terrorism domestic surveilence I would say thats not 'commercial'
First will be ubiquitous aerial photography. There's of course just plain getting photos for fun and for checking things like condition of roof, basically just cheaper version of current aerial photography and videos, such as a personal drone (instead of a helicopter with a camera crew, with total cost probably around $1000/hour) following you and filming you doing some sports.
But things will quickly go further with imaging stuff. For example, now you have "baby cams" so you can check on your baby sleeping from different room. In future there will be "kid drones" which will follow your kid (to playground, friends houses, going to school...) and let you check on them remotely.
Then there will be drones that actually do something, such as robot window cleaners, much like there are robot lawnmowers now. A bigger drone can function as a safety harness when working in high places much like an always-deployed parachute, and even a bigger drone can replace so called "cherry picker". In a restaurant or bar, a drone might bring your order to your table.
Lot of possibilities, and what really happens with drones during next several decades is hard to imagine beforehand, because drones have potential to be a life-changing technology, much like phones - mobile phones - smartphones, or travelling photographers - personal compact cameras - Internet-connected digital cameras. The essential thing with drones is, they can get to places without interfering with people (at least as long as we don't have personal jetpacks in common use).