According to Michael Singer, founder and CEO of DroneView Technologies, here is the Drone Market Outlook for 2018:
- 2018 will see significantly increased adoption of drones into mainstream business workflows as the tipping point for commercial drone use has arrived.
- Drones used for surveying/mapping and inspection will continue to be the largest markets for commercial drone use and adoption – bringing real ROI to enterprise customers by improving accuracy, increasing timeliness of relevant data, enhancing safety and reducing costs.
- Autonomous (software controlled) drone flights will further increase with broadened commercial adoption and improved flight control software capabilities.
- The drone service provider market will continue to grow and segregate, with “higher end” drone service providers bringing increasingly specialized industry expertise.
- Increasing drone equipment and sensor capabilities coupled with falling costs will continue. Expect additional RTK (real time kinematic) drone offerings as well as more affordable LiDAR sensors for drone mapping.
- The public’s perception of drones as a useful tool and not an object of fear will continue to improve, with notably highly visible projects from Google Project Wing and Amazon Prime Air working on drone delivery, Facebook Aquila working on solar powered long endurance drones used to beam internet connectivity, Uber working on passenger drones, among numerous others.
- Increased use of AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning, especially in the drone inspection markets to derive automated analysis and actionable insights from voluminous amounts of high definition images.
DroneViewTechnologies, www.droneviewtech.com