The adoption of drone technology across industries leaped from the fad stage to the mega-trend stage fairly quickly

The drone industry is rapidly growing and will continue to expand in the future. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) make various applications easier, such as commercial delivery, mapping, and search & rescue. Along with the economic benefits they create, these tools also speed up data collection and reduce the workload of the enforcement teams. Ongoing technological advances, such as algorithms to avoid obstacles and planned network configuration, increasingly allow pilots to fly their aircraft beyond the visual line of sight (VLOS), thus opening up the option of autopilot. Federal and local governments are now optimizing drone-related regulations to ensure aviation safety. This will enable everyone to benefit as the industry matures.

As a known fact, commercial usage of drones is gaining steady momentum and has become the talk of the hour, as multiple industries are working with drones as part of their daily regular business functions. The commercial drone industry is still young, but it has begun to see some consolidation and major investments from industrial conglomerates, chip companies, IT consulting firms, and major defense contractors. For now, the industry leaders are still a handful of early-stage manufacturers in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Drones can reach places humans cannot access easily. Flying at lower heights enables them to get sharp and high-quality images, allowing them to collect a lot of high-quality data compared to helicopters. As such, drones are now being used to capture breathtaking photos, perform aerial inspection services, and do many other complex tasks with ease. However, this is far from their real potential. The applications for commercial drones are numerous. They are likely to find many more applications in the building inspection, construction industry, oil and gas refinery inspection, agriculture surveillance and mapping, rescue operations, aerial photography, thermal imaging, and more.

Manufacturers, designers, innovators, and other technology professionals are continually adding advanced features and functionalities, hence equipping drones with amazing possibilities. Drones have been around for more than two decades, but their roots date back to World War I when both the U.S. and France worked on developing automatic, unmanned airplanes. But the last few years have been significant in terms of drone adoption, usage expansion across industries, and global awareness.

From technically manning sensitive military areas to luring hobbyists throughout the world, drone technology has developed and prospered in the last few years. Individuals, commercial entities, and governments have come to realize that drones have multiple uses.

As it becomes cheaper to customize commercial drones, the door will be opened to allow new functionality in a wide array of niche spaces. Sophisticated drones could soon be doing everyday tasks like fertilizing crop fields on an automated basis, monitoring traffic incidents, surveying hard-to-reach places, or even delivering pizzas.

Increasing work efficiency and productivity, decreasing workload and production costs, improving accuracy, refining service, and customer relations, and resolving security issues on a vast scale are a few of the top uses drones offer industries globally. The adoption of drone technology across industries leaped from the fad stage to the mega-trend stage fairly quickly as more and more businesses started to realize its potential, scope, and scale of global reach.

Major companies like Amazon, UPS, and DHL are in favor of drone delivery. Drones could save a lot of manpower and shift unnecessary road traffic to the sky. Besides, they can be used over smaller distances to deliver small packages, food, letters, medicines, beverages, and the like.

Drones provide quick means, after a natural or man-made disaster, to gather information and navigate debris and rubble to look for injured victims. Its high-definition cameras, sensors, and radars give rescue teams access to a higher field of view, saving the need to spend resources on manned helicopters.  Where larger aerial vehicles would prove perilous or inefficient, drones, thanks to their small size, can provide a close-up view.