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 Global spending on drones could add up to close to $100 billion over
the next decade, with commercial uses - from farming and filming to
pipelines and parcels - accounting for around an eighth of that
market, according to BI Intelligence.
But for years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the
authority largely responsible for regulation in the United States,
has dragged its feet, only last month issuing draft rules on who can
fly drones, how and where. It's likely to be a year or more before
the regulations are in place - good news for companies operating
outside the U.S. and looking to build a business around drones.
Sky-Futures, a British company that dominates the use of drones to
collect and analyze inspection data for oil and gas companies, says
its business soared 700 percent last year as the normally
conservative energy industry embraced the new technology. Co-founder
and operations director Chris Blackford said the company is coupling
drones with software and a better understanding of what works in the
field, giving Sky-Futures "a head-start over the U.S because we
understand pretty intimately the problems facing the oil and gas
market, and how we can solve them with technology."
Looser regulations outside the U.S. have created pockets of
innovation attracting ideas, money and momentum, says Patrick Thevoz,
co-founder and CEO of Swiss-based Flyability, which builds drones
inside a spherical cage that allows them to bump through doors,
tunnels and forests without losing balance.
Another British company, BioCarbon Engineering, hopes to speed up
reforestation by using drones to plant germinated seeds, and shares
in New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft trebled in the first few days
after listing in Australia last month, on investor hopes for the
personalized aircraft maker which is developing a UAV that could be
used by the military, oil and gas, mining and farming industries.
In Japan, the government is looking to fast track industry-friendly
regulation to give its drone business an edge.
PALM OIL, PACK DOGS
But the real work, say those in the industry, is in building out the
drone ecosystem: the payload, software, operator and end user, and
making sense of the data. That can only come by connecting to
potential customers.
"As long as you don't have the end user because they can't use it,
you're basically missing a lot of the ecosystem," says Thevoz.
In Singapore, Garuda Robotics is already moving beyond just being a
drone operator. "The drones are a means to get the data out of the
sky," says co-founder and CEO Mark Yong, "but if you can't process
it you've not created any value for the customer."
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While the company has been helping map the boundaries of palm oil
plantations in Malaysia, it has added the ability to calibrate the
drones' cameras to measure moisture levels in individual trees. It's
now working with agronomists to figure out how to make sense of that
thermal data to judge the health of trees and their likely yield.
Other projects include assembling real-time 3D maps of building
sites to help construction schedules, monitoring and reducing algae
blooms and keeping tabs on packs of stray dogs using infrared
cameras.
All of this would be hard, if not impossible, under FAA regulations
that limit drones flying out of sight of the operator, or at night.
While regulation typically lags technology, no one's betting against
Silicon Valley dominating the industry in the long run. Last year,
more than $100 million flowed into U.S. drone start-ups, according
to CB Insights, double 2013 levels.
"Let's not kid ourselves," said Philip Von Meyenburg, who runs a
drone operating company out of Singapore. "They know what they're
doing in the U.S."
And China, too, is in the game as hardware prices fall rapidly.
China's DJI sells consumer grade drones for $500, making it hard for
companies producing lower volumes to justify their higher prices.
"The challenge for all drone manufacturers now is that we're in a
market that is constantly updating," said Flyability's Thevoz.
(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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