Jan 5, 2018 -- 2017 was a significant year with many great successes for  DroneView Technologies. We emerged as a leading drone services company providing aerial mapping and geospatial services to enterprise customers throughout the United States.  

Below is a brief overview from the past year and our outlook as we fly into 2018.

Specialization and Market Focus

The markets that we serve are large and growing. We work for civil engineers and surveyors as well as landfill, mining, aggregate, earth moving, construction, energy, and telecommunication companies collecting aerial images and providing photogrammetric processing for high precision topographic mapping, stockpile measurement and inspection services.

With a seasoned team of drone pilots, photogrammetrists, surveyors, CAD technicians, data analysts and IT professionals, we assist clients throughout the US, acquiring and processing aerial image data and help them derive tangible benefits from enhancements to workflow, safety and productivity.

Aerial Intelligence: Expanded Fleet and Sensors

We take a consultative approach, working closely with our clients to understand their intended uses of this data, their accuracy requirements, their workflows and timelines and their various stakeholders. While drones are the right tool in many cases, there are some situations in which other tools are able to achieve a better result. As such, we now utilize many different platforms and sensors throughout the United States in addition to our multi rotor and fixed wing RTK drones including piloted aircraft and helicopters for image and LiDAR acquisition, mobile LiDAR, thermal and bathymetric sensors.

Customized Training

As drones become accepted within enterprise organizations, some of our customers are interested in establishing internal drone operations. While this manifests in many flavors, the most common involves customized training for our clients’ employees to learn proper drone image acquisition and ground control placement/measurement procedures. Most still rely on DroneView Technologies to do the requisite photogrammetric processing, reporting, mapping and data storage.

Regulation

The FAA continues to make great strides in making the airspace more accessible for drone operators while maintaining safety. We expect to see increased access to instant flight authorizations in controlled airspaces in the coming year as the FAA continues to rollout their LAANC program [low altitude authorization and notification capability]. Additional progress is also being made in updated rules for flights beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), night time flying and drone flights over people.

Drone Market Outlook for 2018

1.   2018 will see significantly increased adoption of drones into mainstream business workflows as the tipping point for commercial drone use has arrived

2.   Drones used for surveying/mapping and inspection will continue to be the largest markets for commercial drone use and adoption - bringing real ROI to enterprise customers by improving accuracy, increasing timeliness of relevant data, enhancing safety and reducing costs.

3.   Autonomous (software controlled) drone flights will further increasewith broadened commercial adoption and improved flight control software capabilities.

4.   The drone service provider market will continue to grow and segregate, with “higher end” drone service providers bringing increasingly specialized industry expertise.

5.   Increasing drone equipment and sensor capabilities coupled with falling costs will continue. Expect additional RTK (real time kinematic) drone offerings as well as more affordable LiDAR sensors for drone mapping.

6.   The public’s perception of drones as a useful tool and not an object of fear will continue to improve, with notably highly visible projects from Google Project Wing and Amazon Prime Air working on drone delivery, FaceBook Aquila working on solar powered long endurance drones used to beam internet connectivity, Uber working on passenger drones, among numerous others.

7.   Increased use of AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning, especially in the drone inspection markets to derive automated analysis and actionable insights from voluminous amounts of high definition images.

We offer our gratitude and sincere thanks to the many people that have helped guide us on our journey. With clarity to our business and strength in our market leading team of professionals, we are extremely excited for what lies ahead for DroneView Technologies in the upcoming year and beyond.

Our best wishes to all for a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Michael Singer
   Founder and CEO, DroneView Technologies