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Drone disruption: Transforming industries
- As the growing use of drones disrupts industries as diverse as mining and healthcare…
- …we think the total global drone market is set to expand…
- …but changing regulations and consumer attitudes could shape the industry’s evolution
Could drones become a permanent feature of our skyline? Drones – sometimes known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – are essentially flying robots. They have been widely used for a while now in society and industry, with a broad variety of applications including surveying agricultural land, inspecting renewable power plants, and delivering time-critical medical supplies.
We believe that drone use could further accelerate. The pandemic accelerated the wider use of remote technologies such as video conferencing for work, telemedicine for healthcare, and online shopping. We think drones are set to lean into this disruptive megatrend, supported by advances in cameras, sensor and battery technologies. What’s more, drones can be combined with other technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to even more transformative effect.
In our latest report, we focus on three types of drone:
- Commercial drones used by companies and industries
- Consumer drones used by individuals for recreational purposes such as photography
- Electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs, electric aircraft capable of carrying human passengers and heavier cargo
Our estimates suggest that the collective global market for these types of drones, including hardware and software sales, is around USD28.6bn today – a figure that is set to grow substantially over the coming decade, in our view.
USD28.6bn
Estimated global value of the global drone market today
c.90%
Potential reduction in herbicide use with AI-enabled agricultural drones
Why might companies deploy drones? Drones have the potential to boost productivity, save time and costs, and carry out tasks with greater accuracy, as well as improve the safety of operations. Indeed, they are already changing the way things are done in a range of industries. To name just a few:
- Mining and infrastructure: Drones are being used for safety inspections, surveying, and mapping instead of manned aircraft and workers
- Insurance: Drones are helping companies assess damage following events such as storms, helping them process customer claims more quickly
- Healthcare: The UK’s National Health Service has piloted a scheme to deliver chemotherapy drugs from the mainland to the Isle of Wight via drone, cutting the delivery time from 4 hours to 30 minutes
- Agriculture: Drones with AI programs enabling farmers to target problem areas could reduce herbicide use by as much as 90% versus traditional methods
- Travel: The first commercial eVTOL services, initially providing links between major cities and outlying airports, could come into operation as soon as 2024
However, changing regulatory frameworks and consumer attitudes could play a key role in shaping the industry’s evolution from here.
Policymakers around the world are fine-tuning their approach, balancing privacy, security, and environmental concerns with the potential benefits that drones can offer. In 2016, for example, the US Federal Aviation Administration began offering exemptions for drone companies to operate including for use cases in insurance, construction, and agriculture. Many authorities, including those in China, India and the UK, are looking at how the technology might be used in the future, and creating a regulatory and licensing framework to support it.
Consumer attitudes are changing. In 2021 the European Union Aviation Safety Agency released an Urban Air Mobility Survey, which suggested 83% of respondents were either ‘rather positive’ or ‘very positive’ in their attitudes towards the use of drones in cities. But there were nuances: those surveyed were generally more positive about using drones for deliveries than they were about the idea of using eVTOLs as passenger transport, and younger people were more likely than older people to feel positive about the tech.
As the drone market develops, more infrastructure will be required. This means not only hard infrastructure, such as take-off and landing sites and air traffic management systems, but services such as cybersecurity to prevent drones being “hacked” mid-air –as well as insurance, and drone fleet financing.
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