Members of our team are down in Denver, Colorado this week attending DJI Airworks. This is the second year of the conference and it’s evident that the ecosystem is growing. The event represents DJI’s dedication to driving the application of drone technology to critical workflows for the enterprise. Attendees represent vendors, technology providers, trainers, customers and more. It’s full of drone nerdery and it’s been fabulous. Below are some of the key themes of the conference thus far.
One of the underlying themes of the conference is that the necessary technological components exist. It’s the collaboration, software development, integration, and adoption of drone technology into critical workflows that need to happen for drones to live up to the hype they’ve received over the last few years.
One could argue whether this is 100% accurate and representative of the current state of the industry. For instance, just because a technology exists, it doesn’t mean that it’s currently available at a price that is bearable and scalable for industry. From a visionary standpoint however, it’s hard to argue with that sentiment.
The drone itself is just a part of the value story for the enterprise. Although drone tech is advancing, becoming more approachable, and easier to adopt, there is an increased emphasis on how drone data is processed, and analyzed, and in what time frame.
This brings technologies like computer vision, artificial intelligence and cloud computing deeper into the conversation. Although impactful, if all you’re doing is capturing data with a drone, you’re short-changing yourself. Supporting technologies, like computer vision and artificial intelligence, will exponentially increase the value of drone data.
In general, and outside of relatively few players, enterprises haven’t even scratched the surface of what is available with drone technology – What are the roadblocks and how do we accelerate adoption?
For multiple reasons (ranging from training to hesitancy to business inertia) we’ve got a long way to go in terms of adoption and integration into daily workflows – How do we address these and in what order?
Despite these challenges, those dedicated to using drones in their critical workflows are doing amazing things and experiencing great results. It is evident that the future is very bright and excitement levels are still high for drones. Sky high.
We’re looking forward to learning more from DJI and its other partners. We’ll share much of what we learn here on our blog in the coming days.