Commercial Drones Market Would Be $34B by 2024?
The idea of drones, or as they are more technically known, Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs) is one that has been tinkering in the hearts and minds of technology enthusiasts since the invention of electronics. Reducing the size of actual, fully sized aircraft carriers, for purposes more than you can count on one hand, has been slowly realizing over the past decade. Everyone, from military organizations to multimedia aficionados, want a drone, and they have ample reasons for wanting one. Below is a list of all the industries that the commercial drone is going to become an integral part of, first without and then later with IoT capabilities, expanding ever-further the applicatory scape of this unmanned and mobile product.
AGRICULTURE
Farmers across the globe are already using smaller airplanes, with single user seating, to spray chemicals across large areas of plantations. And that’s not just limited to pesticides or even fertilizers anymore. The idea of sowing seeds by literally shooting them with force towards the soft ground after a spray of water using the same drones, or just after it has rained, is the way many cities and even countries are thinking of growing trees to tackle the global warming pandemic.
MILITARY
Reconnaissance has always been an issue. Traversing scape where it would be difficult fo rhumans or other sizeable crafts to go to are within the reach of UAVs. The scope of military applications is unlimited with this technology and coupled with IoT capabilities, these machines can be programmed to automate their own decision making based off of real time data and heuristic based vectors.
TELECOMMUNICATION
Ever heard of nano satellites? Or of Facebook’s plan to offer free internet world wide using weather balloons and other floating objects carrying wireless devices? Now even that idea seems redundant, arbitrary and ineffective since a drone can easily cover an area with not just wireless reception and transmission capabilities, but a host of many other applications, such as video and multimedia transmission.
MINING
Just like shooting seeds into the ground, mining companies around the world are looking at this technology to enable drones with the use of actuators and other machinery to take over tasks, mundane yet dangerous or even impossible such as connecting fueling pipes on aircrafts mid -flight or changing light bulbs on the very top of the kilometer tall towers which help aircrafts navigate bad weather with high-frequency, very easy to spot red lights.
TRANSPORT
With unmanned vehicles, the idea of transport revolves around freight goods and logistics. Using drones, one of the upcoming targets seed carriers for agricultural purposes as discussed above, allowing more than a single drone to communicate with the rest and figure out the best strategy for delivering its payload. Other than that, Amazon is experimenting with the idea of having a drone deliver your next order of a pair of Nikes straight to your doorstep, while following the live location you enabled via WhatsApp.
With all these ideas one thing is clear. The domain of UAV and their integration with real everyday life is not impossible. Not even unlikely. In fact many companies estimate that within the next year, sales of UAVs will surpass USD12 Billion, which would be a Compound Annual Growth Increase of 7.6% since the last reports in 2016. With this, it should be taken in to account, how the Department of Defense allocated a budget of USD2.9 Billion in 2016 for drone related R&D alone, with an estimated 30 million consumer shipments by just 2021.
