Don't be surprised to see more drones flying around

The commercial drone market is expected to top $11.2 billion in 2017.

Super-fast same-day deliveries. Life-saving monitoring technology. Traffic awareness during rush hours. State-of-the-art security.
When it comes to drone technology, the list of possibilities is an impressive one. The UAE has already made great strides towards a future where drones will be used in various industries.
At the recent World Government Summit, Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced that it had successfully tested a drone capable of carrying passengers. The Chinese-made EHang 184 can carry a passenger weighing up to 100kg and a small suitcase. In addition, the drone has a battery allowing for a half-hour flight and a range of up to 50km, while being monitored remotely by a control room on the ground. There are hopes that the autonomous aerial vehicle will become a common sight in Dubai's skyline by the summer of this year.
Towards the end of last year, the RTA also announced that it has plans to deploy drones to monitor traffic on Dubai's roads.
Khaled Al Awadhi, RTA's director of Automated Collection System, noted that drone deployment will begin in the second quarter of 2017 to monitor the streets and send back the information to the RTA control centre. Live traffic feed will be sent to the RTA, but the public will not yet gain access to this at the initial stage of the project. The RTA, however, will use push notifications via apps and social media to inform the public of road hotspots and to inform the motorists of available parking spaces.
Production of drones for personal and commercial use is growing rapidly, with global market revenue expected to increase 34 per cent to reach more than $6 billion in 2017 and grow to more than $11.2 billion by 2020, according to a new forecast from Gartner.
Almost three million drones will be produced in 2017, 39 per cent more than in 2016. The overall drone market will see substantial growth, but the dynamics of the personal and commercial submarkets are very different, Gartner analysts said.
Personal drones will continue to increase in popularity as an affordable extension of consumers' smartphones for taking photographs and selfies and for other entertainment options.
The market for commercial drones, on the other hand, is much smaller, with a significantly higher average selling price in comparison with personal drones.
With more countries solidifying their drone regulations, the market is beginning to stabilise, and companies are now buying drones to test and deploy in nearly every industry.
"The commercial and personal drone markets are increasingly overlapping, as lower-priced personal devices are being used for commercial ventures," said Gerald Van Hoy, senior research analyst at Gartner.
"Personal drone vendors are now aggressively trying to position themselves in the commercial market. Recent technological advances blur the lines, allowing personal drones to be used in many special-purpose applications such as surveillance, 3D mapping and modelling," he added.
- rohma@khaleejtimes.com