A Year in the (Drone)Life: Lessons Learned From Our First Year

It has been one year since we launched DRONELIFE.com. In that year we have been through multiple redesigns of our site, helped hundreds of people buy a drone, launched our own drone hiring service, and broken our Phantom five times.

More than anything though, we have learned an incredible amount about a unique technology. Here are some of our most interesting observations from our first year.

Faster than a Speeding Bullet

The consumer technology market of 2015 has trained us to expect annual installments of technology. We have had a new iPhone model every year for the last eight years and a new Call of Duty game every year for the last ten years. Despite a completely different magnitude of complexity, it looks as if the consumer drone industry is going to follow that same pattern.

In the last year, all the major manufacturers launched at least two new drones. At the same time, dozens of new drones appeared on the scene. Some exploded in popularity, others have yet to see an official release, while others have disappeared off the face of earth.

New models have ushered in new features and price drops. Price drops have meant a lower cost of entry for those curious about drones, which in turn has lead to exponential growth in the number of drones taking flight in the U.S.

New features have enabled enthusiasts to push the technology into undiscovered territory (both literally and figuratively).

For example, in the span of about a year, auto-takeoff and return to home went from novel new features to a function we take for granted. Now it’s strange if a new drone comes out and doesn’t include these features.

And yet, for all the progress being made, fly aways and crashes are still common. Battery life and payload capacity still limit the drone as an end-to-end solution. As amazing new features roll out, manufacturers still struggle with the same cornerstone impediments year after year.

Obviously drone manufacturers are always trying to solve these problems, but it has created this environment where everyone is learning to run, walk, and crawl all at the same time.

The point is, the industry is moving incredibly fast. If you blink, you will miss something.

It’s amazing to watch, but this blinding speed doesn’t work for everyone…

Drones are at the center of a technological web

Like comic books and fantasy novels, remote control airplanes used to be a niche hobby with a nerdy stigma. Now all three ‘hobbies’ have become worldwide phenomenon vacuuming up billions of investment dollars every year.

But drones aren’t just the natural evolution of RC aircraft. The drone movement has been made possible by the intersection of many industries and technologies. In our first year at DRONELIFE, we have seen how aviation, photography, GPS and geo-matching, agriculture, biology, healthcare, image processing, big data and the internet of things all have symbiotic relationships with drones.

The current drone market exists because of developments in these fields and these fields are benefiting from the expansion and popularity of the drone industry because drones bring a literal third dimension to how a company conducts its business.

At every drone-centric event, you meet pilots and entrepreneurs but there are also farmers, fire chiefs, and journalists who are adapting UAV technology to their respective industries.

Of course, with all this growth, comes some inevitable pain…

The FAA is coming around

When we started DRONELIFE, it was pretty clear everyone blamed the FAA for the lack of progress the U.S. had made as far as integrating drones into our airspace and preparing for a future where drones are commonplace.

The frustration seemed to be justified; the FAA Modernization and Reform Act was passed in 2012 and the administration had since missed several deadlines. The Roadmap to UAS Integration was unfocused and appeared to be trying to shoe-horn drones into existing aviation regulations instead of understanding we needed new legal and physical infrastructures to accommodate drones.

Add this to the fact that Jim Williams (who is a nice guy and has a thankless job) never gave any updates in his public appearances, and the discontent in the ranks seemed fairly justified.

But over the last year, progress has been made. The NPRM was finally published and the FAA is authorizing more commercial flights every week thanks to the Section 333 exemption process.

After all, this is the U.S. government we are talking about. This process was always going to be a slow one. It was always going to be reactive versus proactive.

Drone flights weren’t banned in National Parks until after someone crashed there. That’s the way it is and the way it will be.

The stance of ‘no commercial flights’ was and is a pain in a lot of peoples’ sides, but it never really held up in court and it certainly didn’t deter people from flying commercial because…

Business is a-booming

We have added 120 hundred companies from all over the world to our database over the last year. Recently, we rebranded this database into JobforDrones.com. There are so many drones for hire (and people looking to hire a drone) that we saw the need to have a dedicated service to help these people meet each other.

As someone astutely pointed out on our Facebook page, “Lol you can’t hire drones yet it’s against the law still.”

Technically, he’s not wrong. But, with new drone companies starting up almost every day, it’s pretty clear the FAA’s restrictions have not stopped the propellers from turning.

So, based on what we have learned in the last year, here is our prediction for the next 12 months: New drones will hit the market, people will belly-ache about safety and privacy, the FAA will try to maintain some semblance of control while also trying to get regulations out the door, and the technology itself will get smarter, cheaper, easier to use and, as a result,  more commonplace.