https://www.iotworldtoday.com/wp-content/themes/ioti_child/assets/images/logo/IoTWorldToday-mobile-logo.png
  • Home
  • News
    • Back
    • Roundups
  • Strategy
  • Special Reports
  • Business Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Industry Perspectives
    • Featured Vendors
  • Other Content
    • Back
    • Q&As
    • Case Studies
    • Features
    • How-to
    • Opinion
    • Podcasts
    • Strategic Partners
    • Latest videos
  • More
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Editorial Submissions
  • Events
Iot World Today
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • News
    • Back
    • Roundups
  • Strategy
  • Special Reports
  • Business Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Industry Perspectives
    • Featured Vendors
  • Other Content
    • Back
    • Q&As
    • Case Studies
    • Features
    • How-to
    • Opinion
    • Podcasts
    • Strategic Partners
    • Latest videos
  • More
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Editorial Submissions
  • Events
  • newsletter
  • IIoT
  • Cities
  • Energy
  • Homes/Buildings
  • Transportation/Logistics
  • Connected Health Care
  • Retail
  • AI
  • Metaverse
  • Development
  • Security
ioti.com

Supply Chain, Transportation & Logistics


Thinkstock

Google and Intel will help out in drone testing.

Here Comes the War for Commercial Drone Dominance

At some point in the not-too-distant future, fleets of commercial drones are expected to swarm across American skies.
  • Written by Bloomberg News
  • 12th May 2017

Companies in a wide range of industries will employ unmanned vehicles for tactical advantage—inspecting infrastructure, surveying crops, maybe even estimating how much your new roof will cost. 

And when these drones fly, a torrent of data will follow them like an invisible contrail.

“Data is the new oil,” Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich said this week at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s annual Xponential conference in Dallas, the industry’s top trade show. He cited a growing competitive “separation” between companies that collect and understand their data and those that don’t. A single autonomous car can generate the same data trove as 3,000 people surfing the internet, while a small drone fleet could easily create 150 terabytes of data per day, he said (1,000 gigabytes equals 1 terabyte). “The data rate is going to explode on us in the next few years,” Krzanich said.

But how to handle that wide open fire hose of information?

“Operation of an unmanned system is no longer a stand-alone activity,” Lockheed Martin Corp. proclaims in its promotional materials for its Hydra Fusion Tools software. “There [is] an assortment of maps, images, video, and intelligence which are being broadcast to the operators and this needs to be fused into a common operational picture.” This proposition, unsurprisingly, is leading to an array of new business models aimed at helping companies sift through and exploit the mountains of information headed their way. 

Into this universe comes Airbus SE, the European aerospace conglomerate. Airbus is starting a new data company, called Airbus Aerial, to provide an array of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) services, a field the company estimates could increase to more than $120 billion annually as the use of these fleets expands, said Dirk Hoke, CEO of Airbus’s defence and space group. Hoke introduced the new company Wednesday at Xponential.

The proliferation of commercial drones won’t be so much about getting your pizza or new shirt faster—although there is that consideration—but a broader change in how companies employ aerial surveillance and data to inform their businesses, spurred by efficiency and new U.S. rules allowing commercial unmanned systems to operate at farther distances, autonomously.

A diverse array of companies, ranging from insurers and utilities to real estate and energy, are likely to shift some of their operations to UAV. Some of the work now done by helicopters could be replaced at lower cost. Insurers, for example, are finding aerial surveillance to be a good method for assessing claims after tornadoes and hurricanes and to help understand risks in their underwriting activities.

Airbus Aerial aims to compile high-altitude data from a fleet of eight Airbus satellites and drones, blending it into an intelligence service for agriculture, insurance, oil and gas, utilities, and state and local governments. Aerial will be based in Germany, near Munich, with U.S. offices in Atlanta.

The company sees 2017 as a way to explore the market, testing the business with “a small, select group of customers” to determine how clients will value Aerial’s services, said Jana Rosenmann, Airbus senior vice president of unmanned aerial systems. Airbus will fly third-party drones for its clients but will also explore building its own hardware, she said. “The initial business is not relying on Airbus having its own drone today,” Rosenmann said in a telephone interview.

The company already operates high-altitude solar-powered UAVs, dubbed Zephyr, which has stayed aloft for as long as 14 days. Airbus calls Zephyr “a high-altitude pseudo satellite” due to its high cruising level of up to 70,000 feet. 

Most customers will have a specific need for the services of companies like Aerial and won’t care how the information is acquired, be it by drone, satellite, or other means, said Jesse Kallman, who will lead the Airbus unit’s U.S. operations. “A drone is really just a truck that you stick a sensor on,” he said. “We will use whatever hardware makes the most sense.” Aerial pricing is likely to be tailored to a specific market or customer, Kallman said, ranging from recurring subscriptions to one-off jobs. 

To date, one of the major impediments to commercial drone flying has been the lack of federal rules, which are now pending at the Federal Aviation Administration. The regulations sort out operational guidelines to integrate UAVs safely into existing air traffic. Although slow to get these rules squared away, the American UAV service market may mature more quickly than in Europe, owing to the U.S. having only a single regulatory body, Hoke said.

Yet as soon as these new commercial operations take flight, those who employ them will be grappling with “the whole info-glut problem,” said Nazlin Kanji, a program director at AeroVironment Inc., a Simi Valley, Calif.-based defense contractor that builds drones and analytics software for military and civilian use. “It’s an interesting challenge because the amount of data that drones generate is huge—we’re talking petabytes and petabytes of data,” she said (1,000 terabytes equals 1 petabyte). “It really becomes that big data problem everybody keeps talking about but no one really knows how to address.”

The field of drone services has already begun seeing consolidation among smaller players, with much of the business focused on courting large companies and recurring revenue streams, said Jon Damush, vice president of commercial at Insitu, a Boeing Co. subsidiary that builds and flies drones. Over time, given the cost of contracting with a drone service, some of the larger drone data users—such as miners and pipeline operators—might decide to buy their own drones and software. “When you become a certain size on the expense line, somebody’s going to notice,” Damush said.

But Kanji counters that there’s room “for a lot of different vendors,” from companies that offer just data storage to others that may sell analysis, data collection, or a combination. Some of these data wranglers focus on software, offering drone users the ability to create detailed interfaces for the data that UAVs emit.

Others, such as Insitu, focus on drone reconnaissance and data analysis for railroads, large mining companies in Australia, and pipeline operators. That’s the larger-scale end of the business, leaving many smaller players eager to exploit common drone necessities among many industries. “One thing we’ve found is that with agriculture, utilities, railroads, and construction, a lot of them have very similar needs,” Kanji said, citing one example: “All of them worry about vegetation.” 

Tags: Article Supply Chain, Transportation & Logistics Vertical Industries News

Related Content


  • Image shows a fire truck in New York City
    Nvidia Files Patent to Help Self-Driving Cars Detect Emergency Vehicles
    The company’s solution could prevent AV’s from interfering with first responders on the road
  • Image shows the inside of a Tesla Model X P90D full electric luxury crossover SUV car with a large touch screen and dashboard screen
    Teslas Using Autopilot Involved in 273 Crashes Since July
    Data revealed following NHTSA research into crashes with cars equipped with advanced driver-assist systems
  • Continental invests in Motovis
    Continental Invests in Chinese Self-Driving Company Motovis
    Announcement comes weeks after Bosch announced it was partnering with WeRide to develop autonomous driving software
  • Small Robot Company's Per Plant Farming robot
    Robotic Farming Services Rolling out to 50 Farms This Fall
    Small Robot Company is Britain’s first fully autonomous crop-scanning service

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your IoT World Today account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Latest News

  • Image shows Unilever's Alberto Prado at AI Summit 2022 in London
    AI Summit 2022: Unilever's Alberto Prado
  • Image shows a fleet of Cruise robotaxis blocking a San Francisco intersection
    Fleet of Driverless Cruise Robotaxis Block Street for Hours
  • Tesla Recalls 59,000 Vehicles Over Software Glitch
  • SoftBank, May Mobility Team on Autonomous Driving

Roundups

View all

IoT Product Roundup: Canonical, InfluxData, Wiliot and More

23rd June 2022

IoT Product Roundup: Cisco, Telit, Draganfly and More

9th June 2022

IoT Deals, Partnerships Roundup: Google, Arm, Senet and More

26th May 2022

White Papers

View all

The Role of Manufacturing Technology in Continuous Improvement Ebook

6th April 2022

IIoT Platform Trends for Manufacturing in 2022

6th April 2022

Latest Videos

View all
Image shows Unilever's Alberto Prado at AI Summit 2022 in London

AI Summit 2022: Unilever’s Alberto Prado

Prado talks about how Unilever is using AI to accelerate the speed of new discoveries and gives them access to more breakthrough innovation

Image Shows John Lewis' Barry Panai at AI Summit London 2022

AI Summit 2022: John Lewis’ Barry Panayi on AI in Retail

Panayi talks about data and AI in retail and how individuals and the technology can work together

E-books

View all

How Remote Access Helps Enterprises Improve IT Service and Employee Satisfaction

12th January 2022

An Integrated Approach to IoT Security

6th November 2020

Webinars

View all

Rethinking the Database in the IoT Era

18th May 2022

Jumpstarting Industrial IoT solutions with an edge data management platform

12th May 2022

AI led Digital Transformation of Manufacturing: Time is NOW

9th December 2021

Special Reports

View all

Omdia’s Smart Home Market Dynamics Report

7th January 2022

Cybersecurity Protection Increasingly Depends on Machine Learning

28th October 2020

IoT Security Best Practices for Industry and Enterprise

20th October 2020

Twitter

IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

🤔 Looking for 3 Strategies to Avoid IoT Key Theft? We’ve got you covered! As tech companies continue to develop an… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

5th July 2022
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

AI Summit 2022: Unilever’s Alberto Prado dlvr.it/STMpRN https://t.co/1dyLREr8N6

5th July 2022
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Seoul Robotics Expands 3D Perception Platform across South America dlvr.it/STMhSV https://t.co/a10l3Eb2Kn

5th July 2022
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Microsoft Extends Secured-Core Program to IoT Devices dlvr.it/STMg4k https://t.co/laBPF5VjC4

5th July 2022
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Spot the Robot Dog Helps Police Ahead of Boston’s Fourth of July Celebration dlvr.it/STKWjb https://t.co/LdRg7a2xqU

4th July 2022
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Another 59,000 @Teslas being recalled over a software glitch affecting the vehicle’s Emergency Call safety system… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

4th July 2022
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Join us in the premier #tech destination of #Austin this November 2-3 for our next #IoT event. Connect and collabo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

4th July 2022
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

SoftBank, May Mobility Team on Autonomous Driving dlvr.it/STJrW0 https://t.co/mOYoBsgs14

4th July 2022

Newsletter

Sign up for IoT World Today newsletters: vertical industry coverage on Tuesdays and horizontal tech coverage on Thursdays.

Special Reports

Our Special Reports take an in-depth look at key topics within the IoT space. Download our latest reports.

Business Resources

Find the latest white papers and other resources from selected vendors.

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • IoT World Series
  • Channel Futures
  • RISC-V
  • Dark Reading
  • ITPro Today
  • Web Hosting Talk

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Login/Register

FOLLOW IoT World Today ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookies Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2022 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X