Commercial UAV Show Flies to New Heights

With global sales of drones expected to exceed $89 billion over the next 10 years, it’s no surprise that the hottest emerging tech sector would eventually launch an international trade show and that’s exactly what the Commercial UAV Show 2014 promises for drone users and entrepreneurs. 

Scheduled for Oct. 21-22, 2014 in London, the Show is being billed as the “largest global gathering of the commercial and civil UAV universe.”

Organizers will offer up 80 speakers and expect 1,500 attendees as well as more than 70 exhibitors. 

“[Attendees] will come to learn from a range of case studies presented in five theatres about how people in many sectors are saving money and achieving vast increases in productivity and reliability through careful application of UAV systems and technology,” states Show marketing manager Lorna Moffatt. “They will learn how almost anyone with significant scale or expanse of facilities or infrastructure can benefit from a UAV system,” she added. 

Keynote speakers will include: Professor Simon Blackmore of Harper Adams University, who has led a global effort to incorporate UAVs into agriculture; Jonathan Ledgard, Director of Future of Africa at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (whose flagship project is the development of flying cargo robots in Africa); and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Byron Charbonneau, RCMP Forensic Collision Reconstructionist, who uses “small unmanned aerial systems for the detection of clandestine human burial sites.”

The Show will include On-Floor Seminars that comprise “two jam-packed days of UAV manufacturer and end user presentations, case studies, displays and audience Q&A’s.” 

Attendees will have an opportunity to network with UAV manufacturers on the exhibition floor and “to learn about successful cross-sector UAV projects that are happening right now from UAV end users at their individual exhibition booths” according to event organizers. 

Cost for full two-day pass is $3,399 (USD) – 2,000 pounds — if booked before Aug. 1. The pass includes admission to the entire conference, lunch and refreshments, exhibition pass, access to the Networking Portal and an evening networking party.