From unmanned balloon aircrafts delivering bombs in the mid 1800’s for the Europeans, to the 2010’s where drones started service delivery, drone technology has surely came a long way, and the future of drone technology seems more promising than ever.
With the ever expanding horizon of the tech industry, innovations are revolutionizing markets and businesses at a pace not witnessed before. Drone technology with its precision, easy deployment and security is at the forefront of enhancing efficiency and productivity, lightening workload, addressing security matters, and expanding businesses and industries all around the globe beyond the potential once realized.
It has not only become central to many businesses and governmental organizations, but has also made its way into places where industries were lacking behind. From package delivery at peak hours, to reconnaissance missions, drones are proving handy in places humans were previously unable to reach.
Military Use
Commercial usage of drone technology is on the rise, as more and more industries are deploying drone technology to enhance their businesses and bring efficiency to their systems. According to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle System International (AUVSI), commercial drones can help expand the US industry by $82 billion and add 100,000 jobs by the end of 2025.
A report by Goldman Sachs shows that by the end of 2020, $70 billion will be spent on drone technology by militaries around the globe. This ever increasing capital spending shows that the future belongs to drone technology as ROI (return of investment) is high, and industries are drawing in on the benefits.
Agricultural Use
Drone tech’s compatibility with the agricultural industry seems natural, as farmers can employ drones to inspect vast areas of land and gather real time information about water use, crop health, and soil examinations. Land inspection that took months, can now be done daily. Besides, drones provide farmers with a large cache of data that can be analyzed to manage the fields and improve them in order to expand business. Farming’s future lies with the drone industry.
Maintenance, Development and Construction
Maintenance and development of infrastructure can be aided by drones. They can be used to inspect infrastructure at a cheaper and faster rate, ensuring safety. Cellular companies are employing drones to inspect cell towers and in the future, the whole maintenance and development of these towers maybe taken by drones.
In the same way, large infrastructure like dams, bridges, buildings and energy parks are also experimenting with drone technology for inspection and maintenance.Drones are also being used as a replacement for infrastructure by some cellular companies as experiments, as in 2017 AT&T successfully tested Flying COW (cell on wings) as a temporary replacement cell tower during a disaster or a load carrier.
Solar powered drones in the future can be used to provide internet where it is not available, and this infrastructure can revolutionize the already booming industry of social networking, as Facebook and Aquila works to connect the whole world through Facebook.
Application of drone technology in the Construction industry can help gather information about construction sites, and inspecting roofs, mining operations and utilities.
Warehousing
Storage houses or depots are benefitting from drone technology just as the vast agriculture fields are. Drones are used for inspection and experimentation with the packaging is being done. The future of repository is with drone tech and if it helps save a lot of finances for giants like Walmart, Amazon, then it will be replicated by other companies in the business, at a vendor level as well.
Delivery
Food delivery is one of the applications of drone technology that caught much of our attention. In 2016 when the first food delivery was made using a drone in a town near Auckland, New Zealand, the future looked promising as drones started to deliver more and more food orders, and even some restaurants experimented as drones were employed to take orders like waiters.
Video Logging and Tourism Industry
Drones are also making their way into the tourism and video logging industry, as many v-loggers take breathtaking shots of scenic landscapes and promote tourism in certain areas. Drones can access places humans cannot and thus help collect data on the terrain ahead and also provide a peek into the wildlife habitats, where otherwise it was impossible for tourists to get into.
Drones in Technology
While drone technology is the go to technology of the future, the real breakthrough is emerging as AI enhances drone technology. The algorithms used by AI are groundbreaking and taking drone technology to another dimension.
Drone technology combined with computer programming software is helping researchers capture visual information and develop computer models of the data.Global UAV technologies provided 4G enabled drones with specialized multi spectral imaging that is the proving handy in the vineyard industry, and helps with crop management, irrigation systems and planning harvest.
Using AI with drone technology can also predict and make models of future infrastructure design, specially designed algorithms can help model designs with the help of drones taking into consideration all the pros and cons.
Information Management
Information management by drones is also a key prospect of the future, as the technology is growing and with education of the employees, the tech companies and start ups can finally show how it can be done.
The drone technology of today surely provides answers to certain questions about what the future might look like. A drone series of the 7th generation innovation with payload interchangeability, complete commercial compatibility, increased intelligence piloting, enhanced airspace cognizance and auto take off and landing, will not only change the above-mentioned industries, but also our conception of these and other industries and businesses.
The future is surely here and it is brighter with drone technology lighting our way into the future.
