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The drone industry has rapidly evolved, transforming a wide range of sectors. Despite industry development, several challenges hinder the sector’s growth and potential. Elsight and P3Tech’s Drone Market Survey identified the highest three challenges respondents named: regulations, costs, and communications..
#1: Regulations
The drone industry faces complex and evolving regulatory frameworks worldwide. Governments and aviation authorities are grappling with the necessity to strike a balance between fostering innovation and ensuring safety and privacy. Since drones were first legalized within the US for business use in 2016, the capabilities of the technologies have quickly outpaced the regulatory framework, so it comes as no surprise that just about 75% of survey responses listed “Regulators” as a barrier to widespread adoption of drone operations.
Regulatory bodies all over the world have made progress on simplifying airspace access: but a rulemaking on flight beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) stays elusive within the U.S. BVLOS flight is well known as a crucial step to deploying industrial drones at scale, attributable to the extra use cases that BVLOS flight opens and the extra value that an increased radius of operation offers for existing use cases like drone delivery. With no rule, stakeholders are still forced to interact in lengthy and complicated processes for waivers and exceptions.
“As BVLOS-enabling technology continues to mature and more organizations begin to successfully trial prototype platforms, the bottleneck of regulations laid down by the US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) and other lawmaking entities becomes much more of a frustration,” says the survey. “Crystallization of regulatory frameworks and streamlining of authorization processes must occur within the near future to ensure that businesses to scale and the industry to evolve further.”
#2 Cost Considerations
Cost is the second mostly named challenge for the drone industry. Supply chain issues, chip shortages, and regulatory limitations for presidency customers have driven up the fee of hardware. Many specialized drones have entered the market: this hardware often carries sophisticated sensors – and a high price tag. As well as, the prices of engaging in regulatory activities like waivers and certifications might be prohibitive.
#3 Communications
Perhaps essentially the most interesting answer under the “challenges” portion of the survey was communications (communications followed extremely closely behind costs, cited by almost 40% of respondents as a challenge to the drone industry.) Drones steadily interact with other aircraft, air traffic control systems, and various stakeholders on the bottom. Reliable communication is crucial for real-time flight monitoring, command and control, and data transmission: communication systems are essential to make sure safety and efficiency, especially in advanced drone operations like BVLOS flight.
The drone industry faces undeniable challenges related to regulations, costs, and communications. As technology evolves and stakeholders concentrate on getting over these hurdles, nonetheless, the 2023 Drone Market Survey indicates that there may be good evidence for optimism and investment. See the total paper for insights on essentially the most common current business models, use cases, goal markets, and more.