Toy and entertainment drones, camera drones for professional and business use, moon-shot drones and military drones are all becoming more and more distinct as much of the drone industry gets commoditized. Prices are dropping even as impressive new features are added. It’s a difficult time in the drone business.

UPDATED 1/13/2017: SF District Attorney files false advertising suit against Lily Robotics. Details added below.

Commercial drones

The commercial drones market consists of consumer products like toys, games and camera drones for photography and action selfies, and the professional market (called the pro-sumer market) which serves the construction, surveying, mapping, utilities, telecom, ag, public safety and insurance industries where the drone is matched with speciality software to provide package solutions unique to those industry groups. Many feel that a saturation point has been reached in the consumer marketplace and that after reaching that point it then becomes a race to the bottom in terms of price and profitability, hence the shift to the pro-sumer market by almost all drone makers.

Parrot SA – layoffs

Parrot SA is a French wireless products manufacturer based in Paris, France. Parrot invented and manufactured the AR.Drone and initiated a drone division which now represents 1/3 of their business. Parrot just released its Q4 2016 report which showed a 15% drop in revenue. The company had revenues of €85 million but targeted €100 million. Revenue from drones was €60 million, with €11 million coming from commercial, and €49 million from consumer drones. As a result, Parrot announced plans to reduce its drone workforce by 35%, laying off around 290 people.

Parrot plans to focus on a reduced number of consumer products, redeploy product offerings, realign resources and adjust its support teams. Conversely, Parrot will continue to invest in its commercial drone business which has been doing well and is steadily growing.

3D Robotics – layoffs

3D Robotics and their Solo quadcopter were media hits until their product stumbled and their ambitious inventories didn’t move. Like Parrot, 3DR laid off hundreds last year, had to shut down facilities, and has since been scrambling to keep afloat by refocusing on commercial operations in the pro-sumer marketplace.

Lily Robotics – refunds and failure

Lily, a Silicon Valley startup with a stylish camera drone and presentation, announced that although it had $34 million in pre-sales, it couldn’t get additional funds to meet production demands and was closing down. What remains of the company is focused on handling refunds.

“After so much hard work, we are sad to see this adventure come to an end,” founders Balaresque and Bradlow wrote on the Lily website. “We are very sorry and disappointed that we will not be able to deliver your flying camera, and are incredibly grateful for your support as a pre-order customer.”

In a late development which portends difficulty for other over-exuberant marketing types, the San Francisco district attorney’s office filed suit against Lily Robotics over claims that the drone maker engaged in false advertising and unfair business practices. Lily said it would begin shipping drones to customers who had placed orders by February 2016 but failed to live up to that promise. The office alleged that Lily lured customers with a promotional video that was actually filmed by a “much more expensive, professional camera drone that required two people to operate.”

“It does not matter if a company is established or if it is a startup,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Everyone in the market must follow the rules. By protecting consumers, we protect confidence in our system of commerce.”

Google – moonshot shutdown

Alphabet (Google) has closed down the Titan Project to fly high-altitude drones that would beam wireless Internet access back down to the earth. More than 50 project members were let go – some have moved to other Google X projects. Titan Aerospace was acquired by Google in 2014 and was reformed into the Titan Project which competed with another Google X project, Project Loon, which also has problems. Loon is temporarily mired in an IP infringement suit with Space Data.

GoPro Karma – layoffs and refunds

Although GoPro had a big presence at CES, their Karma drone wasn’t there and the sales people said that they hope it will be re-released in a few months. Karma was high-profile, long-anticipated, and late. The Karma was supposed to be the company’s hope to pull up diminishing revenues. Karma had mid-flight power failures and GoPro recalled all the devices shipped and offered refunds. GoPro cut its staff by about 200 people in November. Karma’s relaunch, if it happens, will need to compensate for product and price improvements offered by DJI that outperform and underprice the Karma in all but camera lenses.

SZ DJI Technology – 2/3 of the market

DJI is the elephant in the room. Their products have outperformed, outpriced and been faster to market than all their competitors. Their marketing has emphasized integration with pro-sumer software, GoPro cameras and mounts, and other accessories. They keep on inventing and they are headquartered in Shenzhen where all their suppliers reside, hence their ability to be quick to market.

“What we realized is that it’s inherently much more difficult for a Silicon Valley-based, software-focused company to compete against a vertically integrated powerhouse manufacturing company in China,” said Colin Guinn, 3D Robotics’ former chief revenue officer.

Founded in 2006 as a company that built flight controllers for remote control toy helicopters, DJI unveiled the Phantom in 2012, an off-the-shelf drone that became the standard for consumer drones.

DJI seems to have a rhythm to their products: launch, then 6-10 months later lower prices, then launch a newer upgraded product at a price point halfway between the previous product and the discounted price, then repeat the process.

Even DJI has recently begun to feel the heat from fellow Chinese drone makers Xiaomi and Yuneec both of which undercut DJI with similar products at lower prices. Hence DJI’s stressing their collaboration with and integration of software and accessory vendors focusing on the pro-sumer marketplace.

Defense drones

In the defense sector the Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk drones that have done their work in two wars have become popularized by movies that exposed their expense, their vulnerabilities, and their Las Vegas-based human pilots and sensor operators controlling them remotely. Now DARPA and the DoD are introducing new robot war machines. Their latest is drone swarms, where several small flying robots work together to do jobs previously done by the larger craft. An anti-air missile can shoot down an $18 million Reaper, but firing that same anti-air missile at a swarm of drones wouldn’t work.

With every Predator, there’s a joystick and flight controls for a human pilot who maneuvers it. That format changes entirely with a group of autonomous swarming drones.

“They are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” according to Strategic Capabilities Office Director William Roper. Unlike the Predator, where the machine responds to the pilot’s joystick, this swarm receives objectives from a human controller, and then directs itself to that location. Presumably, the swarm could still fly to a preset list of objectives even if it loses contact with a human controller, giving it the freedom to operate in the face of jamming as well as anti-air weapons.

Drones to protect and defend are a necessary part of government’s province and a steady source of research, invention, and income for the military industrial complex. In the next four years, at least in the U.S., the defense/security segment of the drone industry is expecting significant growth.

InterDrone concluded their 2nd annual trade show and conference in Las Vegas. The differences between the 2015 event and this one reflect the rapid changes in the industry and can be seen as a predictor for the next few years.

In 2015, it was all about the fun of flying and where you could get a drone, outfit it with cameras and accessories, and go fly. Three makers (Shenzhen DJI Innovations, 3D Robotics (3DR), and Yuneec) had the largest booths and retail resellers, carrying case makers, camera sellers, GoPro, and other accessory makers all had booths. DJI, 3DR and Yuneec had all received massive scale-up fundings during the year.

2016 was all about professionals doing their business with drones.

• The head of the FAA gave the keynote address
• The crowd of 4,000 was 1/3 larger than 2015
• The speakers list and panels were a serious step up from 2015 and included:Commercial uses in surveying, agriculture, big payload movement
  • Service-providing instead of selling
  • Uses for first responders
  • All forms of filming, mapping and photography
• Multiple booths for hoods and FPV (first-person-view) headsets to be able to better see what the onboard camera is seeing
• Instead of DJI and GoPro being the dominant players, Parrot and Yuneec held significant presences with their commercial focus

Parrot, the French provider of the original AR. drone that premiered their quadcopter at Sharper Image stores and now sells hundreds of thousands of various sized single-wing and quad-style drones worldwide, was there with their SLAM Dunk autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance kit for developers.

In time for the Christmas season, but not seen at the InterDrone show, is Parrot’s new DISCO FPV smart flying wing with what they call “cockpit glasses,” a headset to see what the onboard camera is seeing. Very slick!

Parrot has decided, as a corporate policy, that the commercial uses of drones should be a big contributor to Parrot’s income stream and they’ve acquired and invented to make that happen. They’ve invested in senseFly, Pix4D, MicaSense and Airinov – all companies providing drones for professional use. I interviewed Parrot’s founder, chairman and CEO Henri Seydoux last year who said:

“We are moving forward with our external growth policy initiated in 2011 and focusing on new products with high-potential, outstanding and complementary technological expertise, applications for commercial and retail customer segments, strong operational and financial synergies. Parrot intends to meet the needs of professionals moving into the civil drone age and firmly believes in the commercial potential of this market, (on which the Parrot AR.Drone has already enabled us to gain global recognition) and I am very pleased that we can also serve the commercial drone market as well.”

“Agriculture is one of the fastest-growing market segments for unmanned aircraft commercial applications. The sensors required to capture accurate data are a critical part of the solution, and [our recent acquisition of MicaSense and Airinov] brings this technology to the table.”

Yuneec, with the biggest booth at the show, is copying the success that DJI has had providing low-cost professional-grade drones for upgrading and resale through a distributor an international integrator and rebranding network, is making inroads into what was initially a DJI-dominated industry.

BOTTOM LINE: The commercial drone industry is maturing similar to the way industrial robots matured: a few major manufacturers providing their drones to thousands of integrators, resellers and value-added service providers which extend the sales reach of the manufacturers. Most of the recent research reports on the industry show CAGR rates ranging from 16% to over 40% for commercial drones and 9% to 15% for military/defense drones.

Previously known for consumer products for smartphones, tablets and cars, Paris-based Parrot recently branched into both the consumer and commercial drone businesses.

Parrot created the AR.Drone quadcopter and revealed it at CES 2010 in Las Vegas. Since then they have sold over a million of them – 700M in 2014 alone! In 2014, drones generated 34% of Parrot’s total revenue. At CES 2014 they launched two new mini drones for the retail consumer market. All appear to have done quite well during the Christmas season.

But what is particularly interesting is Parrots growth In the commercial drone sector. Parrot is acquiring companies and developing products to provide drones, software and data solutions for the agriculture, mapping and surveillance industries. To jumpstart their movement toward commercial drones, two spinoffs from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPF), senseFly and Pix4D, were invested in in 2012.

• senseFly designs and develops a line of winged drones and is soon to release a quadcopter as well. All their drones are for commercial use. senseFly’s $25K eBee drone was rated one of the Top 7 Drones for Agriculture in 2014 by DroneLife.
• Pix4D provides image processing software for mapping and modeling geo-referenced 2D images into 3D models and for a wide range of GIS and CAD applications.

Two more acquisitions in B2B (business-to-business) drones happened in 2014: Parrot invested in MicaSense and Airinov.

• MicaSense is a Seattle-based software and systems company providing advanced data gathering and processing, coupled with professional analysis tools, to provide accurate and repeatable information on the status of a crop. Raw data from the MicaSense camera, a lightweight, multispectral camera, is transformed into vegetation index maps. Powerful analytics provide time-based trends and change maps. Analysis tools such as plant population counts enable optimized farm management. Parrot invested $2M in a Series A round of funding in November, 2014.
• Airinov is a French provider of UAV farming applications and sensors for use on senseFly and other UAS. Their software can process flight and sensor data and produce fertilization recommendations which are compatible with most brands of dispenser equipment. Parrot invested $2.2M for a 20.9% equity interest in Airinov.

Henri Seydoux, Parrot’s founder, chairman and CEO, said:

We are moving forward with our external growth policy initiated in 2011 and focusing on new products with high-potential, outstanding and complementary technological expertise, applications for commercial and retail customer segments, strong operational and financial synergies. Parrot intends to meet the needs of professionals moving into the civil drone age and firmly believes in the commercial potential of this market, (on which the Parrot AR.Drone has already enabled us to gain global recognition) and I am very pleased that we can also serve the commercial drone market as well.

Agriculture is one of the fastest-growing market segments for unmanned aircraft commercial applications. The sensors required to capture accurate data are a critical part of the solution, and [our recent acquisition of MicaSense and Airinov] brings this technology to the table.

As much fun as Parrot’s drones are, there is a growing market for professional service drones for mapping, surveying, protection, real estate photography and agricultural uses. Shenzen-based Dajiang Innovation Technology (DJI) has sold over 400M of their line of consumer and B2B drones; San Francisco startup Skycatch has partnered with one of the largest heavy machinery makers, Komatsu, to automate construction and mining job sites world wide using drones, mapping software and various sensors.

• There is also a steadily growing defense and first-responder market led by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, AeroVironment, Elbit and Northrup Grumman. The Global UAV Market 2015-2025 projects the global defense UAV market to grow at a 5.66% CAGR from 2014 to 2025 with North America and Europe the largest markets and the military drone segment (UCAV – unmanned combat aerial vehicle) to dominate the UAV market.
• But the real good news is Wintergreen Research’s report entitled “Commercial Drones: Highways in the Sky, UAS, Market Shares, Strategies and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2015 to 2021” (whew!) which projects commercial drone growth at 34.3% CAGR over the period from 2014 to 2021. That’s game-changing growth!

In addition to contending with the FAA, the group must also gain traction with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which manages the communication frequencies that drones would use, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which will be ruling on privacy issues. With multiple government bodies to lobby, Drobac believes it makes sense to work together in a concerted effort.

According to Drobac, there was already an appetite for a coalition among those in the small UAV business, whose needs differed somewhat from the larger UAV firms with aerospace and defence contracts. “The coalition members are all extremely consumer-focused,” he said, pointing out that the first priority of the group will be to lobby for clear safety and privacy guidelines, both of which are key concerns for consumers. The coalition has already filed several petitions for exemption with the FAA, and hopes to influence and educate policymakers and consumers about the commercial opportunities of small UAVs.

Patrick Egan from sUAS News thinks this consumer focus makes the coalition’s lobbying needs distinctly different from the needs of the UAV “old guard” of Department of Defence (DoD) vendors. “Previous lobbying efforts have been working to regulate 10-year-old aviation technology,” he says, pointing out that, by contrast, members of the Small UAV Coalition want to invest in new technology and new applications that haven’t even been discovered yet, and for that they will need extremely broad and inclusive regulatory definitions.

It therefor matters that they have their own representation. “If you’ve successfully lobbied to have the standards built around your product or business needs, you will have an edge,” says Egan, pointing out  that while current regulations tend to focus on the fixed wing products common to DoD vendors, the regulations don’t even consider the multirotor devices that are common to the small UAV industry right now.

Image is another factor that may be drawing the coalition together. “A lot of small UAV companies have avoided aligning themselves with DoD vendors because of their military focus,” says Egan. “They just don’t need the controversy.”

Amazon retained council from Akin Gump when it filed its petition for exemption with the FAA this past July to begin tests with drones that weigh less than 55 pounds and fly below 400 feet. In its letter to the FAA, Amazon said that so far it has only been able to test its drones inside its Seattle R&D lab or in other countries, but would “prefer to keep the focus, jobs, and investment of this important research and development initiative in the United States by conducting private research and development operations outdoors near Seattle – where our next generation R&D lab and distinguished team of engineers, scientists and aeronautical professionals are located.”

Earlier this week, the Economic Times rumored that Amazon will begin testing drone delivery in India. If true, Amazon is pulling all punches. The threat of losing talent, R&D and investment to other countries is one of the key arguments of commercial drone advocates in the US. Andra Keay of Silicon Valley Robotics says, “Going to India sends a strong message to the FAA, and it makes so much sense. India is well-known for the high calibre of their roboticists, engineers and developers. And yet parts of the country still have very rudimentary infrastructure, which actually makes it easier to do disruptive innovation there. It’s harder to patch existing legacy building and transport technologies than it is to start afresh.”

Drobac says that allowing private testing facilities is key to keeping UAV innovation in the US: “Sure the FAA has some test sites, but it’s much more pragmatic to have testing near to where your headquarters are.”

For companies that are pushing innovation in this space, distance is not the only issue with testing facilities. New technologies such as sense-and-avoid will need to be peer reviewed to meet (as-yet unspecified) safety regulations, and private companies like Amazon don’t want to go to public testing facilities. Says Egan: “Even though they might need an independent 3rd party to review their safety record, they still want to keep their proprietary data safe. We don’t know how safe that data is at a public site.”

The high cost of using the FAA testing sites (according to Egan, $5-10K per day) presents another obstacle. “I’m not sure that the FAA took into account how prohibitive these costs could be to a small company that is just getting off the ground,” said Egan. “This is really a hold-over from the days when most UAV operators were Department of Defence vendors.”

According to the US Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan organization that tracks lobbying expenditures in the US,  Amazon has significantly increased its lobbying expenditures in recent years (see chart). In the USA Today article, Chris Anderson from 3D Robotics was quoted as saying that Amazon’s interest “lets people realize how big it can be … They have a well-established presence in Washington and they were able to kick-start the mechanics of this coalition so we could quickly join and get moving.”

Egan agrees that the influence of a big player is critical to the future success of the coalition, saying that “Amazon has a lot of horsepower and the White House has now renewed its interest in the issue,” however he points out that in the longer term it could be difficult for companies with such different applications and financial resources to keep their interests aligned.

Drobac could not comment on the price of entry for joining the coalition, and would not speculate on how much money would have to be spent to smooth the way for the small UAV industry in the US. “It’s not about how much money will be required to change lawmakers’ minds, ” he said. “The question will come down to whether we can educate people about the tremendous benefits of UAVs to society, and we’re confident that we will because technology always wins.”

So far in 2014, Amazon has spent $40K on lobbying for Prime Air – a number that is likely to increase now that the coalition is official.

Whatever future challenges may exist between coalition members, Drobac insists that their focus will be on their common objective of opening up US airspace to small commercial UAVs: “If we can crack that door open, all boats will rise.”

“I just hope they don’t get frustrated at the pace the FAA operates at,” says Egan, who has been advocating for commercial UAVs for over ten years. “The movement towards the integration of US airspace has been slower than glacial.”

Parrot’s AR.Drone without styrofoam bumper guard (top) and with (bottom).

As an aside, part of the business plan for selling the AR.Drones is to also sell parts to repair the devices when they crash – an inevitable outcome of the adventure of flying them. Parrot has made buying replacement parts easy and provides visual tutorials on how to install replacement parts and make needed repairs. A bit like printer companies selling their own brand of paper and ink.

Henri Seydoux, Founder, Chairmen and CEO, Parrot SA.

People appear willing to pay more to get the extra features of an iPad or tablet. Thus e-readers were a device for a particular moment in time that has been replaced by a newer technology. This process is analogous to secretaries being replaced by word processing machines and then by PCs, WordStar and Microsoft Word.

Temporary, Incremental and Transitional Solutions

CyPhyWorks new EASE drone.

A great example of a temporary solution is CyPhy Works‘ new pair of drones (EASE and PARC): timely, innovative and providing solutions for specific needs with a transitional solution: a tether.

CyPhy Works began with funding to research methods to view and analyze bridges and other potential security targets but soon concluded that conventional drones couldn’t handle the payload of cameras and instruments, sensor processing, security, and flight duration needed to get the job done.

“The biggest problem with [surveillance] robots today is they send them inside a building, they go down the stairs, no communications; they go around the corner, no comms. You go into a bunker and it’s got some rebar and you don’t get comms,” CEO Helen Greiner says.

“The problems are power and communications. It all comes down to that.”

“When you have a flying vehicle of a size, a diameter that can fit through a door comfortably, it will last for, you know, 20 minutes. And then the customers will want to carry something else, and that something else requires power, and it weighs the robot down and it ends up lasting 15 minutes, and somebody else puts something on and it ends up lasting 10 minutes, and none of it’s acceptable. You would have to be small and fly for at least a few hours to make it useful. With the filament, basically you get high-definition video images all the time, and then it has the added advantages in that it can’t be jammed, it can’t be spoofed, it can’t be intercepted. And it has unlimited power.”

Hence the tether, a clever adaption to today’s limitations enabling the drones to fly for as long as necessary, stream high-def images and sensor data to the base station for processing (instead of onboard), and with security assured (from the device at least) to the base station. [As an aside, the tether is enhanced by having the spooler autonomously controlled by the drone instead of the base station thereby reducing the chances for entanglement. Should it happen to snag or break, the vehicle can use its battery power to fly back to its point of origin.]

An example of an incremental product is the slow but steady movement toward autonomous cars. First there was adaptive cruise control (2001) which automatically adjusts your speed depending on the car in front. Next came active braking (2004), which could detect if a crash was imminent and apply the brakes if necessary. This was followed by lane assist (2008) and self parking systems. The 2014 Mercedes-Benz S Class by Daimler AG (ETR:DAI), will be the first car capable of fully driving itself (under certain minor limitations) by adding new rear-end sensors, pedestrian awareness and driver alertness cameras. The system will rely on 26 separate sensors, including radar and stereo cameras, to monitor traffic and pedestrians up to 650 feet in front. “Steering Assist” will steer in stop-and-start situations and at speeds up to 124 mph; it will slow entering curves but stay in its lane until the driver takes over. [This is just the beginning folks!]

Other incremental and transitionally useful consumer products include CaddyTrek‘s follow-the-golfer carts, Zodiac Marine & Pool‘s Polaris pool cleaners, Husqvarna‘s lawn mower (STO:HUSQ-B) and iRobot‘s (NASDAQ:IRBT) family of floor care products – all examples of early-adopter products for the tech savvy offering some level of utility for their stated tasks. 3D printers also fall into this category with a range of products from $300 on up to $1 million. The stocks of these companies have been highlighted by many of the analysts in recent months as great buys: Stratasys (NASDAQ:SSYS) (which just acquired competitor Objet), 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) and Arcam AB (STO:ARCM). All three stocks have doubled in the last year. Alas, MakerBot, the do-it-yourself (DIY) phenom, is still privately held.

Really Great Inventions

The da Vinci surgical system by Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG), Kiva’s warehouse robots and goods-to-man concept (Kiva was acquired by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) earlier this year), and Liquid Robotic‘s wave gliders are present-day robotics stars. Each is unique and disruptive to the way things were done and each is just a precursor to how things will be in the near future.

Less well known inventions are the inroads the larger industrial robot makers have been making with lightweight single and dual-armed robots capable of working alongside their human counterparts – without a protective barrier between them. Yaskawa Electric (TYO:6506), ABB (NYSE:ABB), KUKA (ETR:KU2), ST Robotics and Universal Robots all have new products making waves in the industry. Rethink Robotics‘ Baxter is the newest player in this trend toward robotic co-workers.

Toys, Kits and Academic Training Bots

WowWee’s Femsapien, Parrot’s AR.Drone quadcopter and Aldebaran’s Nao.

Toys like Parrot‘s (EPA:PARRO) AR.Drone quadcopter (a present-day global hit) and WowWee‘s line of robotic toys and pets (Robosapien, Roboraptor, etc.) have sold millions of units. Aldebaran‘s Nao robots have a large following in high schools and colleges partly because of their enticing humanoid form, their involvement in robotic soccer games, and their high functionality for low cost.

But there are also toys and other robotic items that whither because the developer didn’t want to be diverted into a business when all he/she wanted was to build something fresh and fun. Many of the tele-presence devices getting crowd-funding in recent months are fun-tech gimmick products with no long-term business plan or even interest in having one.

Don’t get me wrong. Robotic toys are likely to be the precursor to more useful robotic inventions – perhaps from the same inventors. But there is definitely an explosion of this kind of robotic toy – SWIVL, Autom, Sphero, Romo and Botiful being examples.

Within academia, industrial robot companies have donated and made available low-cost robots and teacher’s guides for high schools, junior colleges, tech schools and universities for years to help stimulate STEM careers and robotics in particular. Staubli’s Robot House at SCI-Arc, a leading architectural school in Southern California, is an example. But in recent years, more humanoid and open source robots are becoming affordable. Also helping speed up development are open source software resources such as Willow Garage’s ROS.

Healthcare Robotics

In a few recent articles in robotics and healthcare media, including one by the editor of Robotics Review, there has been a call for leadership – for national direction in strategic areas of the robotics industry, particularly in the area of healthcare. Henrik Christensen and the team involved with the publication and presentation of “A Roadmap for U.S. Robotics: from Internet to Robotics” began the process and it has slowly gained momentum.

Early last year President Obama established the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative which included a section for robotics. The initiative was funded with $500 million, 10% earmarked for robotics. The scope of his directive was to insure that critical (defense and security) products were manufactured by Americans in America. Tom Clancy’s new book “Threat Vector” shows just how critical this can be in his fictional account of a virus planted on a foreign-made hard drive component installed in an American-made disk integrated into a high-security American defense installation.

Other countries – the EU, Korea and Japan in particular – have public-private consortiums working on difficult problems for which solutions are in the national interest, hence the reason why they are funded. Other than the American Manufacturing Initiative, American doesn’t have any such strategically-funded national interest projects (except military and defense).

To my way of thinking, advancements in healthcare shouldn’t be held up or otherwise thwarted because of patents, research funding or other corporate or personal (selfish) rationalizations. Patient care should be paramount, profits and profitability secondary. But that’s not the way it is at present nor will it change without political intervention.

I’d like to suggest a change similar to what Henry Ford did when confronted with a similar situation 100 years ago.

In the early years of automobile development, a group owned the rights to a two-cycle gasoline engine patent. By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands or risk a lawsuit. In 1911, Henry Ford won a challenge to the patent. The result was that the patent became virtually worthless and a new association – which would eventually become the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association – was formed. The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all U.S. auto manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, those patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money between all the manufacturers. By the time the U.S. entered WWII, 92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared between these manufacturers, without any exchange of money – or lawsuits. The best braking system was shared by all as was the best window wiper, and many, many other inventions passed freely from one car company to the others. The result was that the user – the car driver – benefitted with the safest and best cars, no matter the brand – and the auto industry flourished as a result.

If an association like the MVMA – with a charismatic and visible leader – were to be launched in the medical robotics arena, perhaps the wonderful new inventions we’ve all read about would become available quicker and with less constraints, patents, and other hold-ups. Patients – you and I – care-givers and healthcare systems would all share in the benefits and lives saved which would come from focused development speed-ups in the robotics-related healthcare marketplace.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the Robot Dragonfly from TechJect. Developed over four years by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology for the US Air Force, the researchers are now investigating commercial and consumer opportunities through their recently released campaign on the crowd-funding website, IndieGoGo.

True consumer (as opposed to military or hobbyist) UAV’s first truly “took to the skies” with the release of Parrot’s iPhone-controlled AR.Drone in 2010, which has, for the last two years, been relatively unchallenged. Now, with the help of crowd-sourced funding, new takes on consumer UAVs are emerging, some more playful, and some more hobbyist oriented.

Few however are as innovative as the Robot Dragonfly, whose patented and bio-inspired drive/flight system gives it the ability to hover like a helicopter, and dynamically switch to a “gliding mode”, more like a conventional fixed-wing craft. As with all crowd-sourced campaigns, the Robot Dragonfly is not yet a finished or proven product, however if product simulations and current prototypes are to be believed (both shown in following video), its four wings and light weight (25g) should offer an interesting array of dynamic movements and flight possibilities not achievable with conventional UAV designs.

The following promotional video was released by the group along with the crowd-funding campaign. This video gives an overview of the Robot Dragonfly’s development at the Georgia Institute of Technology, takes a look at the existing research prototypes and shows simulations of the final version performing in a number of different situations.

The group are targeting a broad range of markets with their initial release and have suggested applications in Augmented-Reality Gaming, Aerial Photography, Telepresence, Personal and Commercial Security, and in the Military. For more information, see the Robot Dragonfly IndieGoGo campaign, where team-members are actively answering questions and responding to suggestions.

In July, the Parrot Group partnered with senseFly, a Swiss start-up and spin-off from the Swiss EPFL, and invested $5.3 million to help senseFly grow. Their initial plan was to develop a high volume manufacturing capability and fund rapid growth and new product development. The eBee is the first such product from that venture. The just announced 3′ wingspan eBee can fly for 45 minutes in 45km/hr winds, and will enable users to take their own aerial photos and produce precise ortho-mosaics and 3D models. senseFly has also established an impressive global network of resellers which presently excludes the US (because of FAA regulatory limitations). The eBee meets the special needs of mining and surveying professionals because of its wind resistance and robustness, high precision 3D image processing and mission planning software.

senseFly, working with another Parrot Group partner and another EPFL spin-off (with a similarly intentioned $2.5 million equity investment from Parrot to spur growth and development), Pix4D, has developed a suite of software which can create a flight path and take 2D geotagged images and then process them into 3D maps.

Below is an EPFL/Pix4D video displaying additional information about the process of filming, tagging and creating 3D maps and images.

When senseFly’s UAVs are allowed into civilian airspace, there are a myriad uses:

• Aerial photography
• Mapping
• Mine and quarry surveys
• Emergency response
• Agricultural and cattle monitoring
• Remote sensing
• Surveying (general and archeological)
• Urban and regional planning
• Infrastructure management
• Etc.

 

As civilian airspace opens to drones like those from senseFly, the sky begins to offer unique perspectives to view and understand our environment. One can see a near-term future where images and data can be captured at low cost, anywhere, any time, and without complex infrastructure or long preparation time and transformed into useful management tools, maps and surveys.

 

“We are witnessing a revolution whereby flying drones are no longer exclusive to the military but are quickly spreading into the civilian world. In 2010, Parrot surprised competitors and fellow researchers alike when they hit the market with their iPhone-piloted quadcopter for filming and gaming. The same year, senseFly revolutionized the job of surveyors by providing fully autonomous flying cameras capable of producing precise 2D and 3D maps within minutes. Both companies are focused on developing very lightweight drones with the strong belief that this is critical to their use by the public at large – far beyond the military”, says Jean-Christophe CEO and co-founder of senseFly.

 

Last week, SenseFly and Pix4D announced deals with drone maker Parrot, in which Parrot will invest in both companies, 5 million Swiss francs in SenseFly and 2.4 million in Pix4D. Both spinoffs of EPFL, SenseFly and Pix4D have a history of cooperation, with SenseFly providing the camera-equipped UAVs for which they have also developed navigational software that allows them to fly complete missions autonomously, and Pix4D providing the software that transforms the thousands of images produced by the drones into unified geographical information. (Kudos to Engadget for their prompt reportage.)

Researchers at the Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia have created a robot to support you while exercising. Joggobot is a modified version of the popular AR Drone quadrocopter platform developed by French company Parrot. The robot will track a marker pattern printed on your t-shirt and fly ahead of you when you go out for a run. The researchers describe Joggobot as an “exertion game”. They believe that jogging is play – we are not jogging to get from A to B, but for the experience of jogging – and point out that jogging with a physical device that reacts to its environment and, similar to a human jogger, has a limited amount of energy for exercise creates a very different interaction experience than pure audio-visual stimuli such as aerobic videos. They hope that the robot can improve the jogging experience and enhance our understanding of why we jog (and hence why we do not jog enough).