Drones, often referred as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have been traditionally used for military purposes because they do not put a pilot’s life at stake in combat zones. With the increasing popularity of these stealth craft, they are now becoming a staple technology to be the eyes and ears of scientists by surveying the ground for archaeological sites, signs of crop damage and illegal hunting, and even zipping inside hurricanes to study the wild storms.
Adoption of drone technology across industries has risen as more and more businesses have started to realize its potential, scope, and scale of global reach. The professionals in sectors like agriculture, construction, and real estate use drone data around the world on a daily basis. For instance, construction is currently the fastest growing sector surging 239 percent in the last year and is now the top industry using drone technology. Some big news for 2019 could be workflow integration of drone data and workflow into predictive maintenance as well as enterprise assets management systems. Capabilities could include documentation, tracking, and GIS data integration. Drones have a wide range of applications in a number of fields, ranging from precision agriculture to aerial mapping. Drones are expected to play a bigger role in logistics and e-commerce sectors. Whether drones are controlled by a remote or accessed via a smart phone app, they possess the capability of reaching the most remote areas with little to no labor and require the least amount of effort, time, and energy.
With the announcements of new imaging sensor integration in 2019 (such as smaller, more lightweight LiDAR), imaging software solutions are expected to advance as companies seek to combine RGB, thermal imaging, orthomosaic, and data from IoT sensors. More aerial imaging and mapping software firms will likely announce artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Right now, most of this is cloud-based machine learning (a.k.a. deep learning and predictive analytics), where datasets are trained by specialized teams. Already, there are some drone-based AI solutions for image recognition/machine vision, but it is still early in the technology development cycle and AI is near peak hype. However, amidst a diverge line of drone services; it is imperative for companies to collaborate with a right drone technology services providing company to address conventional problems.
Aware of the possibilities that a drone can bring to a business and to help companies sift through the multitude of drone technology services providers, APAC CIO Outlook has compiled this edition on leading-edge drone technology services and consulting companies. Being closely scrutinized by a distinguished panel comprised of CIOs, VCs, industry analysts, and APAC CIO Outlook’s editorial panel, we have evaluated and shortlisted some of the most prominent players in the drone technology arena for the year 2019. The organizations featured in this issue through their business knowledge and industry prowess have established their eminence in the drone sector.
We present to you APAC CIO Outlook’s, “10 Most Promising Drone Technology Consulting/Services Companies – 2019.”
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