The term drone commonly refers to any remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) of various forms and different degrees of autonomy, under the control of a human pilot or with the ability to perform fully autonomous flights. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2005 adopted the term unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to define aerial drones. This was later adopted by other governmental agencies worldwide to emphasize the importance of different elements involved rather than a narrow focus on just the aircraft for the development of regulations.

Where are drones commonly used?

Drones are at a stage where they are still continuously evolving and are being deployed in many countries worldwide. Workable laws to regulate these aircrafts are also still being developed. As a result, there is no comprehensive list of RPA. Some major drone market segments are defense, enterprise, consumer, public safety or law enforcement, logistics, and passenger.
The drones that we are in the closest contact with in our daily life belong to the consumer drone segment. They are small in size and use much fewer complex systems to control and navigate than drones used in defense and enterprise sectors. One of the significant drone manufacturers is DJI (Da-Jiang Innovations) from Shenzhen, China. DJI makes some of the most popular consumer drone product lines from basic to advanced models starting under 200 euros.
The latest development in the consumer drone sector is FPV (first-person view) racing. The pilot has an immersive flying experience through augmented reality (AR) goggles that display the live view from a drone camera with very low latency. Higher-end consumer drones from most manufacturers also cross into the growing enterprise drone market with additional modifications for applications in agriculture/farming, inspection or surveying, and mapping. These high-end drones are also being used for cinematography by professionals with a large market in Asia-Pacific.

Where will we see the drones working for us?

Rapid evolution of drones began with the development of defense technologies to remotely pilot an aircraft with weaponized and non-weaponized systems. They are critical for deployment in environments that are deemed dangerous for human-piloted planes and mainly consist of larger drones weighing several kilograms. Today, smaller drones weighing under a kilogram are used by some government agencies dealing with the monitoring of operations, from mapping in precision agriculture to monitoring or assisting in complex situations under security threat by the police.
Commercial drones with industrial applications help monitor telecommunication towers or utilities like water lines and electricity grids, as well as maintain or aid site inspections in mining operations. Recently, these commercial drones are being implemented as prototypes in the logistics and transportation sector, from moving cargoes to transporting people in air taxis.

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