Top 3 drone trends for 2018

Drones have been crowd pleasers at the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show, from different companies’ innovative launches to a tech giant’s exciting drone light show. Now that they are getting more popular, many might have been wondering what’s next for drones. Drone delivery service provider Flytrex via VentureBeat, has three top trends in mind for drones this year:

1. Big data – Drones of the future will be able to take in and analyze better bigger amounts of data, including for weather, traffic and disaster prevention. Just in September last year, drone efforts when Hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck the US has been regarded as a “landmark in drone evolution.” More drones are being deployed for area surveillance, electricity restoration and delivery of relief goods.

2. Flying taxi drones – Autonomous Aerial Vehicles, drones that are big and capable enough of flying up to a pair of people place-to-place are emerging. Some, if not autonomous, can still be easily controlled by joysticks or mobile phones. For instance, the prototype taxi drone that flew by CES 2018.

3. Drones in home surveillance – Because remote surveillance is now mainstream in smart homes, intelligent security drones, like robots, are now good “eyes” of the owner when away from home. Drones are getting better AI for this feature in the form of smart sensors that detect sound and movement. Once intruders or suspicious things are sensed, these drones record in an instant and send alerts to their owners or a central monitoring station.

The improvements in drone AI and increasing applications are expected to get hotter even in the succeeding years. The drone market is poised to grow to $22.15 billion by 2022 as reported by Statistics MRC. China drone makers are said to be key contributors to development in the industry.