How Will Drones Be Used?

Global Guerrillas

VERBATIM

I spent some time on the phone with a reporter from Inc. Magazine last week.  We were discussing the future of entepreneurship and where new opportunity could be found.
He asked me about drones and if there were opportunities for entrepreneurs there.
I told him that there were only two places where drones were going to gain traction:

• Security.   From military operations to intelligence gathering to police surveillance.  
• DiY.   People building their own drones and finding interesting ways to use them.

That's it.
Why?
All of the other uses of drones are closed off due to legal restrictions:

• Drones for passenger transport.  It's pretty clear that drones could be used to transport passengers safely and at much less cost than a manned aircraft.  It won't happen.  Too many legal implications and push back from unions.
• Drones for private info gathering.  Currently prevented.  There's going to be legal wrangling over this for decades, which will prevent an industry from forming (other than "security" related).
• Drones for short haul delivery/transport.  Too difficult to overcome the legal ramifications of operating drones on a mass scale near to homes/buildings.  It will definitely be used in the military.

Much of same logic is going to be applied to other forms of autonomous robotics.  For example: robots can drive a car better than a human being.  Google proved that already with their mapping car.  Will it be common to see "automated" cars in the next decade.  Probably not.  The first person killed by one will kill the industry through lawfare.