The UK Drone Delivery Group (DDG), an industry initiative to provide guidance on the commercial growth of unmanned vehicles, has made an urgent ‘call to action’ for property owners, business leaders and influencers to provide testing areas for drones to prevent ‘an emerging bottleneck to growth’.
According to Field Service News, Robert Garbett founder of the UK DDG, stated, “There is an unnecessary ‘bottleneck’ with the drone industry’s evolution and this primarily lies in the lack of controlled testing locations.
“Examples include large airports and aerodromes, forests, remote coastal areas and ports, through to residential areas and other urban environments. Testing will need to include everything from simple potential drone tasks such as parcel delivery, to much more complex applications such as smart motorway monitoring, law enforcement, rapid response and search and rescue.”
Recently, analysts at Barclays predicted the commercial drone market could grow tenfold from USD4 billion in 2018 to USD40 billion by 2023, resulting in efficiency cost savings of some USD100bn with these predictions relating solely to air drones only. If you add on the fast-growing possibilities for surface, underwater or space unmanned vehicles then the potential growth is substantially greater.
Garbett continued, “These predictions are dependent upon the business community and the wider public recognising the important part they can play regarding potential testing locations and trial areas.
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