Commercial Drone Industry Ready for Takeoff in the U.S.

The interview with Amazon AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos on CBS' (NYSE CBS) 60 Minutes is getting a lot of buzz on the internet; especially his unveiling of a company package delivery system using unmanned drones.

While Bezos acknowledges such a drone delivery system is still years away from reality, the reality is drones – and not just the weaponized military drones that seem to make headlines every week – are already being considered for use across the U.S. in a variety of commerical applications.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs (also known as unmanned aerial systems or UAS), are currently being developed for agricultural use; helping farmers monitor their crops. There's also talk of drones, with their ability to fly or hours at low altitudes, being used in the future for aerial spraying or seeding work.

UAVs are also being put to use for scientific and media purposes, such as monitoring animal migration or letting journalists view otherwise dangerous situations such as fires. And several month ago, according to Reuters, oil giant ConocoPhillips COP confirmed it was working with the Federal Aviation Administration on the “regulatory and safey aspects” of using drone technology.

Industry sources quoted by UPI, meanwhile, expect the commerical drone business to expand to $10 billion within three years. Kevin Robinson, President of Modern Technology Solutions, a firm long involved in the engineering and development of UAV technology for government applications, tells the wire service his company is “strategically positioned to leverage our combined UAS capabilities into the commercial UAS marketplace.”

There have been some major landmarks. This past July, the FAA issued the first U.S. certificiation of drones for commerical use to Boeing BA – for its Insitu ScanEagle division's X200 – and to AeroVironment AVAV for that company's Puma UAV. Both vehicles are classifed as “small UAS” – weighing under 55 pounds with wingspans of around ten feet.

The FAA plans to integrate private sector UAS into the civilian National Airspace System as early as 2015, and Europe plans to follow suit in 2016. But there are still a lot of logistics, technical and otherwise, to overcome.

Dr. Darren Ansell, an expert on unmanned aerial vehicles from the University of Central Lancashire, tells the BBC UAVs like the one Amazon plans to put into use must deal with security and safety issues.

"The UAVs do not currently have the awareness of their environment to be able to avoid flying into people, he said. “To deliver goods to people's homes for example in residential areas, the UAVs must overfly densely populated towns and cities, something that today's regulations prevent.”