At this year’s CES, we saw a lot of new drone technology. Drones are possibly one of the most notable pieces of future tech exhibited at technology conventions, combining tons of features into tiny packages. So what does the future of drone technology look like? Let’s take a look at it from a few different perspectives, commercial, enterprise, and hobby.
On the commercial side, we had DJI, Yuneec, Autel, GoPro, and Powervision showing what they plan on bringing to the table. DJI already seems to have the lead, announcing a bunch of new tech late last year. This includes the Phantom 4 Pro, Inspire 2, Mavic Pro, and more, each surpassing anything else on the market. At CES, we saw X-Star comparing themselves directly with DJI by releasing yet another similar craft to the Phantom. However, the new X-Star offers modularity that may give recent Phantom buyers second thoughts. As we’ve seen, copying DJI tech is not easy and many have failed spectacularly.
Powervision, a brand new drone company, is going after the same market segment with their PowerEgg drone, a name only made sense by their craft’s shape. Although we’ve never seen a drone shaped like an egg before, it will be interesting to see if the downsides (hard to repair, weird to store) are worth the intriguing design. Strangely enough, it seems Polaroid is also going after this market with a drone of their own. Unfortunately, like almost everything else at their CES booth, their drone enforces the idea that Polaroid simply has no idea what their doing. Surprisingly enough, GoPro announced they will be re-releasing the Karma drone. Apparently, the issue was related to the battery popping out of place, but even when working perfectly, the Karma was disappointing.
On the enterprise side, DJI still was the company to beat. With their release of the Inspire 2, Agras agriculture drone, and industrial Wind line, companies like Yuneec and Powervision have huge competition. Yuneec announced their H520 hexacopter, modeled after their Typhoon H. It sports an orange high-visibility paintjob and the ability to carry a range of camera types from thermal to multi-spectral. For those industrial drone pilots with no brand preference, the FLIR Duo camera will certainly be found on a number of DIY crafts, giving budget builds the ability to record thermal video. An underwater drone announced by PowerRay was also exciting news.
For every-day consumers, both “selfie drones” and racer drones were announced. Manufacturers are looking to demystify drones and get them in every household. The ZeroTech Dobby drone, announced mid-2016 isn’t much larger than a smartphone, sports a similarly sized camera and computer vision technology. Racer drones like Unify’s Draco HD are being marketed more towards non-techies being ready to fly, hard to break, and able to stream HD video rather than the usual low-quality video racers are used to.
What we would have liked to see more of was the combination of the exciting augmented reality or virtual reality tech with drone tech, but maybe that is soon to come. DJI and Epson are currently working together to get augmented reality glasses used in conjunction with their drones, most notably the Mavic which is nimble enough to be a racer. Overall, this year’s CES wasn’t as exciting for the drone industry as other years as companies are making their existing crafts more useful, powerful, and portable (not that we’re complaining). It will be exciting to see where this burgeoning industry goes next.
The post Trends in the Drone Industry From CES 2017 appeared first on Drone Inner.
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