We’re starting to see many entrepreneurs and major companies rushing into the world of (non-military) drones, as these little robots promise to solve any problem, any where, any time, automatically, maybe after a short research and development phase. But how short is this “short research and development phase”? Or, more importantly, what are the major limitations of these platforms?

Some might argue that the major bottleneck (specially those drones enabled for vertical takeoff and landing – VTOL) is the on-board power, which restricts the flight endurance, the payload, as well as the communications’ range and bandwidth. There is a myriad of emerging new battery technologies that promise to bring about a major revolution in this area. Nonetheless, these promising batteries technologies are still in the research phase and it may take a decade (I’m an optimist) to have one of these to be mass produced, in order for prices to drop to those of the current Lithium-polymer and similar technologies.

Another set of important issues are related to people safety, privacy preservation, insurance requirements, and general law compliance of the drone and its operator. There have been already plenty of accidents involving drone failures or drone operation by unqualified personnel (either in terms of technical knowledge, ethical standards, or safety measures), which resulted in injured people and some nearly collision with commercial flights. As a consequence, and to prevent more bitter consequences, legislators in EU, USA, and other countries are moving to ground any drone that does not have an explicit authorization from the airspace regulator, while working on more comprehensive regulations to integrate them in the usable airspace.

Finally, the most difficult challenge (in my opinion) is to enable any drone to have a thorough perception of its surrounding environment. To the best of my knowledge, there is no commercially available (non-military) drone capable of localizing itself and have a representation of the surrounding environment. This means that no drone is capable of navigating through a city, to deliver pizzas or tacos or books, avoiding buildings, cars, people, or other drones, particularly if these are moving obstacles. This difficult problem, along with other technical problems that are currently under intensive research, is not acknowledged by most of those going into this industry, and may frustrate some, otherwise, great ideas for a business plan.

To sum up, before thinking of starting a company involving drones (or, really, any other technology) one should have a clear understanding of what they can do NOW, and what are the perspectives of having those enhanced capabilities in the near future.