Now that the FAA has drafted some rules regarding commercial flight, mostly in defining commercial flight and providing some guidelines and certifications for pilots to follow, Drones are seeing more corporate use. Professional Drone pilots can fulfill a variety of tasks based primarily on their cost effectiveness, as well as the ability to go where humans generally can’t.

This is an exciting time for a growing market of drone enthusiasts looking to turn their hobby into a profession that makes money. Here are some of the industries where video drone use has brought revolutionary changes.

Real Estate

Real estate marketing seeks to put potential buyers into the home without ever leaving their own space. Virtual tours began as a popular way of using the internet to introduce buyers to a new space.

Drone footage is now adding to the video reel. Especially helpful on larger estates, including farms and mansions, drones can give buyers a lay of the land. The technology is also very engaging. Consumers seem to love drone tours, and they are inexpensive to produce.

An example of a real estate video made by Steve Loos using his drone.

Weddings

Like film-making, wedding videography is trying to tell a story at its heart. Drone footage allows for creative and engaging angles that would otherwise cost thousands for expensive crane setups. Drones can follow couples as they walk, provide stunning overhead shots and photography, and videographers can collaborate with the couple on site to create any kind of tableau.

Agriculture

Farming has seen a diverse application of drones across the landscape. Specially outfitted drones allow for the planting of seeds and monitoring of soil levels, but drones also allow farmers to get up close and personal with crops. Using video monitoring, farmers are able to identify potential outbreaks of mold and bacteria that could ruin an entire crop.

All of the busy work involving humans walking a field to monitor things can be largely automated, or reduced to a single pilot operating a properly outfitted drone. This makes farms more cost efficient, which is especially important in the growing organic industry.

Humanitarian Work

Cyclone Pam wrought havoc on Vanuatu in 2015, and the remote islands were left powerless waiting for help to arrive. Aerial photographs showed the devastation, and allowed crews some time to plan, but the response time was still considered lackluster. In remote areas, the Red Cross theorized, UAVs might be able to provide some support.

Today, UAVs help assist in devastation relief by providing a scope of the disaster to response teams. Disaster planning often relies on a command-center environment, where those in charge can get an overhead view of the problem and concoct an appropriate response. In addition, drones can be outfitted with small supply packs to provide some much needed relief to civilians on the ground when personnel are unable to get to them.

Deliveries

Amazon made headlines when it announced drones would be used for deliveries, and now it seems this reality isn’t that far off. Very large drones have already begun the process of delivering packages to certain customers, with Amazon mostly leading the way on this initiative.

How far off is a future where your packages arrive by drone? At this stage, with the limits on line-of-sight and distance, we’re still testing possibilities for this new technology. One thing is for certain: the data generated by video, even if it gets converted into 1s and 0s, will be integral to the successful completion of a drone delivery.

Final Thoughts

Drones offer an exciting future, and an entirely new industry of enthusiasts turned professionals. Maintaining and building these units requires technical expertise, and flight has been legitimized through the use of certifications. Professional drone flight might be the next big market revolutionized by technology.

Photo Credits

Drone – pixabay public domain

An example of a real estate video made by Steve Loos using his drone.

Flying quadcopter drone – agriculture farming – by ackab1 on flickr – Some Rights Reserved

Drone surveillance helps search and rescue in Nepal – Wikimedia Creative Commons

Contributing Author Bio
Ashley Andrews

Ashley Andrews is an entrepreneur and blogger.  She now lives in San Diego, CA and is happily self employed.  She enjoys writing about anything that catches her interest, especially tech and entrepreneurship.