Future of Drones Lies in Data, Not Delivery

One day, we imagine, drones will carry products right to consumers’ doorsteps. Retailers, supermarkets and restaurants will deploy squadrons of remotely controlled flying machines to deliver whatever people want whenever they want it.

At least that’s the popular lore. Unfortunately, the reality is different. For now, broad adoption of drone delivery is neither economical nor practical. Today’s commercial drones simply can’t carry anywhere near the weight of ground vehicles. They also are a lot more expensive to operate than trucks or trains. On top of that, air traffic controllers couldn’t manage them safely nor would the public tolerate them constantly buzzing their neighborhoods – even if they could be managed.

The future of drones is in the data not the products they can deliver.

Drones got their start in the military and still have tremendous value there. They can launch weapons with extreme precision and provide security with their cameras. Hobbyists also have made them favorite weekend toys wherever there are pretty vistas.

Drones also are modern-day guard dogs that can augment or replace humans at prisons and other tightly secured facilities. In Australia, drones monitor beaches and coastlines for threats and for swimmers in distress.  A drone helped save a drowning person in New South Wales for the first time earlier this year.

Camera technology is rapidly improving and so is the ability of computer programs to recognize objects and changes in landscapes. This is creating opportunities for drones to replace humans in doing repetitive, dirty or dangerous jobs. 

For example, farmers are using drones to monitor crop growth and plant health. Drones are also excellent tools for monitoring large facilities such as oil refineries, pipelines and electric power transmission cables.

Advances in machine learning allow cameras to recognize items that need repair. Thanks to this technology, drones can reduce the risk to humans who will be relieved of inspecting potentially hazardous sites.

There is also the potential to use commercial drones as overhead platforms to provide not only camera coverage but to act as communications relays for internet and phone services where coverage doesn’t currently exist. 

But their greatest value in the commercial sector is likely in the data that their increasingly sophisticated cameras and sensors will deliver. A nascent but growing industry will assess, sift and manipulate that information for a wide range of purposes.  

Because drones excel at providing information about events on the ground, disaster relief is an obvious growth area. They can survey natural disasters like floods and earthquakes faster and more cheaply than most alternatives. Commercial drones will also find many uses in urban areas aiding police, first responders and city planners. 

In the next 10 to 15 years, every major city will likely have persistent, overhead camera coverage, thanks to drones. These drones will assist the work of public safety officials at reduced cost and decreased danger for human operators. No longer will helicopter pilots have to endanger themselves and their crews when pursuing criminals. Tragedies like the crash of a manned police helicopter in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, can become a thing of the past.

These uses will proliferate as the price of collecting, storing and analyzing data falls. Entrepreneurs will increasingly find ways to resell and reuse drone data as stand-alone businesses. They won’t have to actually own or fly anything. They will be drone data jockeys instead, which might, in fact, be the most profitable drone business there is.

Regulatory and privacy issues will need to be addressed in Washington and in state capitals to make all this possible. But once that set of obstacles is overcome, video data likely will be available in enormous and extremely useful quantities.

Delivery drones are surely in our future. They will move goods inside large industrial zones, such as factories and mines, where concerns about air space management and public perceptions are limited.

But data drones are where the real future really lies. They are going to disrupt businesses in ways we cannot yet anticipate and provide more opportunities than daily deliveries of consumer goods ever could.