Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s a … drone?
Drone? What is a drone? Drones, or unmanned aircraft systems, have seen their popularity skyrocket over the last five years, with the FAA reporting in September of this year that there are more than 550,000 registered drones in the United States.
Drone sales are expected to top 2.4 million units this year alone. This is more than double the number of registered manned aircraft (planes, helicopters, et cetera).
Remote-controlled aircraft have existed for decades, but until recently, they could not fly very far, nor could they stay in the air for extended periods of time. The DJI Phantom 4, one of the most versatile consumer drones on the market today, retails for $1,300 and boasts a 24-minute flight time. The attached 4K camera allows the pilot to see a bird’s-eye view in real time.
The drone industry reaches far beyond simple recreation, offering capabilities to everything from agriculture to construction surveys. Farmers across the United States, and around the world, are using drones to track their crops, and even analyze crop health to prevent large-scale crop failure.
The MIT Technology Review noted in 2014 that not only is the technology superior to satellite imagery, it is also much less expensive than using manned aircraft to monitor crops, which usually runs about $1,000 an hour. A drone that supports autopilot technology (automatically takes off, flies to waypoints, takes pictures/videos, returns to homepoint, and lands itself) can often be purchased for less than $1,000, cutting the cost of this aspect of modern agriculture by an entire level of magnitude.
In construction and real estate, aerial photographs are often necessary, but the cost of a helicopter to take those photos is extremely high. This cost often means that once the photos are taken, there is no opportunity to retake them or to get a different angle. With a drone, as long as the batteries are charged, you can take photos as many times as necessary. With the addition of a livestream for the pilot, pictures are more likely to look great the first time.
The drone industry has been building for years, but it was facing a bottleneck at the federal level. The FAA was tasked with creating drone regulations more thanĀ five years ago. In the Spring of 2016, they were finally announced and went into effect on Aug. 29. Before the new regulations, if a business or university needed a drone, it would have to obtain a waiver from the FAA, and the pilot would have to have a license to fly manned aircraft. This prevented the industry from reaching its full potential.
Under the new regulations, there are two forms of flight: recreational and commercial. For recreational flight (flying just for fun), the pilot does not need any certification; he/she just has to register the drone and be over the age of 13. For commercial flight (flying for some sort of compensation), the pilot needs to pass the Aeronautical Knowledge Test, be over the age of 16, and register the drone. Any business or organization that hires a drone pilot does not need to obtain a waiver.
Now that the industry is free to grow, the FAA projects that there will be more than 1.2 million licensed drone pilots by 2020. So, when you are walking in the mall this holiday season and see a drone outside of Brookstone, maybe stop to take a look. You might be surprised with what you find.
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