IEEE Future Directions
Related Articles
DJI, possibly the most advanced and known producer of consumer drones, has showcased at NABShow in Las Vegas on April 27th, 2017, a combination of one of its most performant drone, DJI M600 Pro drone, with an Hasselblad H6D-100c. The drone is powered by 6 rotors and the camera provides a 100 Mpixels resolution. The package will be available in the third quarter of 2017 for a yet undisclosed price (get ready to shell quite a bit of money…).
What I find interesting, and I had the opportunity of saying so in other posts as more and more drones aims at photographers market, is the evolution we have in this area. Drones have been around for a while as specialised military devices (at a huge price tag). In a few years they have moved into the consumer market dropping their price below 1,000$ yet keeping some features, like auto flight, obstacle avoidance, stable hovering, image detection that used to be extremely expensive characteristics of military devices.
Interestingly, this spread into the consumer market has generated business opportunities (like using drones in weddings) and has stimulated applications in professional areas (like radio tower inspection, pipelines surveillance, emergency delivery…).
They have become platforms and these are now being exploited by services that were just unimaginable 5 years ago.
They are also likely to accelerate the progress in technology for autonomous systems, an area that has recently been declared as strategic by the European Commission in its Horizon 2020 program and that is being considered in the new FDC initiative on Symbiotic Autonomous Systems.
