Why Our Drone Future Is For Real — Someday

(Source: cnet.com)  

In 2002, a stroke-like event turned Henry Evans into a quadriplegic, depriving him of almost all ability to move. Eleven years later, a remote-controlled aircraft has given the former Silicon Valley finance officer a new kind of mobility.

“I distinctly remember lying in bed, wanting to go outside, when it occurred to me that I didn’t need my whole body, just my retinas,” Evans recalls. He posted a note online asking for help, and he got it — in the form of a drone. “I flew around my vineyard, tried to land on a basketball hoop, inspected the solar panels on our roof and came in second in a pole-tagging contest. It was the ultimate exercise of free will.”

Although most people don’t face the limitations Evans does, many of us stand to benefit from drones: lightweight, remote-controlled or self-controlled aircraft that offer an inexpensive eye in the sky. Real estate agents can capture aerial photos of homes for sale, oil companies can easily inspect miles of pipelines, and farmers and ranchers can quickly check fields and livestock without doing a visual survey on foot.

For filmmakers and extreme-sports videographers, drones can deliver exciting new perspectives. For ordinary folks, drones can let us see what it’s like to be a bird. Sports fans already got a glimpse of that, thanks to drones at this year’s World Cup.

These possibilities and more explain why consumers and businesses are snapping up drones, even though the US Federal Aviation Administration limits their commercial use.

Ready for takeoff

“The consumer space is going to explode,” predicts Peter George, vice president of sales and marketing for Paris-based Parrot, the top maker of consumer drones. It has shipped more than 750,000 drones since its first quadcopter in 2010, and George says the company won’t be surprised if shipments double annually for the next five years. It expects to sell about 200,000 this year.

Drones typically follow a preset flight plan or are operated by a person with a remote control. They range from large, missile-equipped military-airplane-like models to hand-sized toy quadcopters, with four propellers that point up. Hobbyists favor models the size of a pizza box that cost a few hundred dollars.

Onboard electronics carefully control propeller speed, letting drones ascend, descend and even perform stunts such as flips. The upcoming Parrot Bebop has a built-in camera; others such as DJI’s Phantom or 3D Robotics’ Iris can be outfitted with small cameras. Bigger drones can tote SLR cameras or 3D laser scanners.

Since the days of film cameras, SkyPan International founder Mark Segal has used a homemade drone to photograph high-rise building sites. He shows prospective investors and buyers exactly what the view from the 30th floor will be. “This has been my life’s work,” says Segal, who just finished taking panoramic photos of a Honolulu parking lot slated to become a multitower Howard Hughes Corp. development.

Businesses hunger for “a camera in the sky covering millions of acres and thousands of construction projects,” adds Rich Levandov, a venture capitalist at Avalon Ventures. That’s why he invested $10 million in SkyCatch, a startup that uses drones to gather data. Some of SkyCatch’s biggest clients are in construction and oil and gas, and they’re looking for what Levandov calls “site truth.”

“They want to see what’s going on with progress,” Levandov says. “Are supplies showing up? What are the crane locations?”

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