Drones and the creative industry : innovative strategies for european SMEs

Abstract

Drones, also called unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS)—there are slight differences between them—have traditionally been used for military applications. Over the last decade, improvements in electronics miniaturization, control and perception systems and battery technologies have accelerated the growth of civil drone technologies and applications. Civil drones are here to stay. They provide unprecedented advantages in certain fields such as aerial photography and filming and aerial inspections, where they have become almost irreplaceable, partly because they involve dramatic cost reductions when compared to traditional solutions. Drones are currently employed in hundreds of applications in different domains. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. All the technology roadmaps agree that drones will have a deep impact on society and that this trend will continue over the next few decades. According to Goldman Sachs, the drone market will reach a total market size of $100 billion before 2020. A large percentage of these sales will come from the military sector, yet the sharpest increases will come from the business and civil sectors, which are forecast to grow at yearly rates of over 15%. Drones equipped with cameras and other sensors are ideal platforms to gather images and other information from inaccessible locations. In fact, most civil drone applications currently centre on aerial photography and filming. Recently, other drone uses, including transporting objects, logistics and precision agriculture, have begun to attract significant attention and are starting to be exploited. Drones are now starting to interact physically with the environment and perform aerial manipulation while flying, thanks to recent research and development work, particularly in European Framework Programme projects, such as FP7 ARCAS and the ongoing H2020 AEROARMS. This is highly relevant when performing tasks such as repairing, installing and replacing items or performing contact inspection tasks with contact sensors, which is of major importance when maintaining infrastructures (i.e. bridges) and industrial plants (i.e. elevated pipes and tanks in oil and gas industries),