The Schizophrenia of the Drone Industry
The whole ecosystem is split between its conservative aeronautical roots and the pace of technical innovation characterized by the fast-changing technology that is usually seen in the smartphone industry. One of the biggest challenges the drone industry is facing is to take the best of both sides of the coin.
The drone industry is moving fast both in usage and technology. The number of permits granted by the FAA increased from 2 in 2014 to 3100 in 2016 and published patents have reached 1600 in 2014 after exponential growth (more data on commercial drones). And this is just the beginning, as the global turnover for commercial drone industry is expected to grow from $590M in 2016 to $12,6B in 2025 (Tractica), representing a CAGR of 36%. This goes with a myriad of new applications, from surveillance to passenger drones, going through delivery.
It has mostly been possible thanks to the decreasing cost of sensors and electronics provided by the smartphone industry since 2007 (first Iphone) as most drones actually use the same sensors as the one used in smartphones (Accelerometers, GPS, Compass …). The decrease in sensor price leads to more accessible drones that are more attractive to the industry.
But smartphone sensors also came with the fast-paced product development and innovation. Drone manufacturers have set their development timelines on a yearly basis, as it is seen for smartphones. The following picture shows the average product development time for smartphone and drone industries.
Drone users also get the smartphone user’s habit, with the need for constant updates, and customized applications. To meet their needs, they have developed an important open source community with the Ardupilot software and the related Diy Drones community, gathering more than 80,000 members. This community provides with its autopilot software an effective solution for hobbyists and for a certain kind of professionals.
This is a good thing for the industry, allowing fast improvement and innovation, but also has a couple of drawbacks, like the delivery of poorly tested and disfunctioning products, like the battery problem of GoPro’s Karma.
This fast evolving culture clashes with another cornerstone of the industry which is its aeronautical background, with completely different mindsets. Aeronautics has nonetheless a major impact on the growing drone industry.
A proof of the impact of aeronautics on the drone industry lies in regulatory bodies. In Europe, since the vote of the Basic Regulation, the EASA is responsible for drone regulation in the European Union while in the US, the FAA is in charge. These two agencies have been responsible, for years now, for traditional aircraft and have a strong aeronautical background. Both of these bodies took the same strategy — a risk based strategy — to regulate drone, as it was done for aeronautics.
With these regulatory bodies come military drones manufacturers and aeronautic firms that know how to answer to demanding regulations. These companies produce safer and more robust products, at a much slower pace. Among these great actors, Airbus works on its Pop.Up and Skyways projects, and Boeing recently unveil its new cargo capable of carrying around 500 pounds.
The impact of aeronautical bodies on the drone industry is a good thing as safety is mandatory for public acceptance and the industry’s development. Aeronautical safety strategy has proved its efficiency for several decades now and we have seen that very clearly as 2017 has been the safest year in aviation history. The drone industry has to benefit from this success.
However, the drawback of avionic rules is that they require time to be defined and put in place, and this could definitely slow the innovation down.
Drone ecosystem is torn apart between the need for fast product development and the need for safety. But if it succeeds in getting the best of both, it will be a model for other industries. The goal is to be able to let innovations strive while keeping people on the ground and other airspace users safe.
The good thing here is that not everything is critical in a drone. One of the major usage with drones today is photogrametry, the ability to represent a place (like a building site) in three dimensions. The application here is not critical: if for some reason the drone does not succeed in collecting needed data, nobody is harmed. On the other hand, if the flight controller fails, the drone will fall and might have major consequences.
Application specific development (for delivery, photogrametry…) are usually not critical whereas flight-related features are (these are the ones we are developing at Hionos). Having a drone architecture capable of separating these features would allow accommodating demanding regulations to the most critical parts while letting the industry to innovate as fast as possible on usage related features.
To continue comparing drones with the smartphone industry, it is as if the operating system of your smartphone (i.e iOS or Android) was very safe and reliable — probably with a fewer updates — but still, the application could be freely developed, fostering innovation.
Fast innovation will bring drone industry to economic efficiency, on the other hand, safety is mandatory to reach social acceptance. Mixing these two cultures is not an easy thing as they come with completely different paradigms and people. But drone can be split between critical flight related capabilities and non-critical usage related ones. This would guarantee safety while letting innovation strive, getting the best of both worlds.
