Agriculture
Farmers were some of the earliest civil adopters, using drones to identify differences in crop conditions. Yamaha Motor Co. has been dusting crops in Japan with UAVs for more than two decades. With the cost dropping for cargo-carrying drones, DJI and others are building crop-spraying and remote sensing vehicles that can help reduce chemical use and improve yields. It has been estimate
d that precision agriculture will account for about 80 percent of the U.S. market for commercial UAVs. Last year, the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority issued the first exemption for agricultural drone use outside of university research. DJI released its eight-rotor Agras MG-1 last year, with a 10-kilogram tank, followed by a thermal-imaging camera for remote sensing. It’s up against companies like Yamaha and local rivals like Shenzhen MicroMultiCopter Aero Technology Co. Imaging
Where the civilian drone boom began. Companies are now using the devices for everything from filming Bollywood weddings, to inspecting remote or hard-to-reach places, like oil rigs. More than 5,000 exemptions have been granted by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, many of them for some form of photography or surveying. Between September 2014 and January, almost 2,000 were filed for real-estate firms to take images of sprawling properties or show the view from an apartment tower that’s yet to be built.
“If you look at a large utility company, they’re spending $40 million a year for helicopter service,” said Jonathan Evans, chief executive officer of Skyward, a producer of flight-planning software for companies including those that inspect phone towers. “If you move the needle just a little bit, it has serious returns on the bottom line for the company.”