UAVS take flight: Leading-edge commercial and industrial applications

April 3, 2021 - By Tracy Cozzens and Diane Sofranec

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are something of a Swiss Army knife for the surveying and mapping communities. Commercial applications continue to grow, with UAVS — known as drones in the vernacular — gathering data and observations for agriculture, mining, utility inspections, natural resources, historical preservation, security, and many more applications.

UAVs perform high-risk tasks that keep workers out of harm’s way. They fly in places and situations difficult or impossible for aircraft to reach. They collect high-resolution imagery across the spectrum, accompanied by exact positioning and location data. They detect and help preserve the past in rich detail.

A study by Polaris Market Research predicts the UAV market will reach $15.62 billion By 2026, spurred not only by new use cases, but through miniaturization and improvement of components. Payload components that continue to improve include GNSS receivers, inertial measurement units, micro-electromechanical components, cameras of all types (RGB, thermal, hyperspectral and high-resolution video) and lidar. (For more on lidar with UAVs, see Diving into UAV lidar surveys.)

In these pages, we share a variety of case studies from companies taking part in the UAV revolution. In many of these use cases, companies saved considerable money using UAVs rather than more traditional surveying methods. In others, UAVs are helping to keep people safe.

In all cases, using UAVs provides a wealth of data that offer new insights, no matter the application.