Problem and Challenges in the Commercial Drone Industry

3 challenges confronting enterprise drones

#1: Today’s drones have limited flight endurance and payload capacity

Today’s drones can only fly for 15 to 30 minutes before they need to swap out or recharge batteries. And while there are drones that can carry payloads up to twenty pounds, five pounds or less is more common. To complicate matters further, there’s an inverse relationship between payload weight and flight endurance: increase the payload and you get less flight time.

What this means is that even in compelling applications, such as inspecting bridges and gas flares, there are frequent interruptions. And drones can’t even be considered for bigger jobs.

#2: Competing solutions refuse to die

Large corporations do not change the way they handle mission-critical tasks without studying, testing, and planning. While drones may be the superior solution, the old way of doing things has stood the test of time.

In many applications, drones look particularly promising, but there are several alternative solutions. Drones enable precision agriculture, but tractor-based sensors and satellite imaging systems can perform similar functions. If a drone detects that a field needs more fertilizer or pesticide, a small plane may still be required to do the spraying. Plus, many types of crops are commodities, and farmers are under pressure to spend as little on advanced technology as possible.

#3: The industry is trying to develop the perfect traffic management system

The drone industry is putting too much time and effort in a futuristic project: developing a comprehensive solution for managing skies filled with drones. It’s not clear when drones will become a common sight in our urban skies. If it takes 20 years, there’s a good chance that whatever traffic management system is developed today will have become obsolete.

Instead of integrating drones with the national airspace system, it makes more sense to keep unmanned and manned air traffic separate. This is the core of Amazon’s proposed airspace model for drones. There simply isn’t enough drone traffic today to justify a highly complex and integrated system.