Christopher Mims reports in the Wall Street Journal:
There are two phases to technological change: the creation of a technology, followed by a longer and more difficult period of figuring out how to exploit it. Drones are entering the second phase. Even without the new rules, sales of drones roughly doubled in the past 12 months.
When a hailstorm hit San Antonio in April, Kristina Tomasetti knew it was time to call out the drones.
Ms. Tomasetti is a director of innovation at insurer USAA, which acquired drones last year in hopes of using them to survey storm damage.
“I’ve been patiently waiting for a hail event,” says Ms. Tomasetti. But she didn’t expect to be inspecting her own home.
To date, drone experiments by USAA and others have been limited by strict federal regulations. That will change at the end of August, when new rules issued by the Federal Aviation Administration will make it easier to get a license to fly a drone for business purposes than to drive a car.
Much has been made of the fact that the FAA won’t allow drones to fly beyond their operator’s sight, which for now puts the kibosh on plans by Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc. and startups like Matternet, which hope to use fleets of drones to deliver packages.
But that overlooks what the rules do permit, and the as-yet unexplored uses that entrepreneurs and executives will devise. As Carlota Perez, a professor at the London School of Economics, outlined in her book “Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital,” there are two phases to technological change: the creation of a technology, followed by a longer and often more difficult period of figuring out how to exploit it.
Drones are entering the second phase. We will look back on this as an inflection point. Even without the new rules, sales of drones roughly doubled in the past 12 months. Those drones are better and easier to fly than ever, with features like better cameras and sensors that help avoid collisions.
Drones already have disrupted aerial photography, replacing cranes, helicopters and airplanes on film and TV sets. The breadth of other industries where they are gaining purchase is striking.
Christian Stallings, research and development manager at McKim & Creed, a surveying and
engineering firm, says that as soon as he can win approval, 5% of his workforce will pilot drones, with one pilot in each of the firm’s 21 field offices.
That is just the beginning. He says drones can cut the time and manpower needed to survey plots of a square mile or less, creating images with resolutions of 1 to 2 inches, previously available only from planes. “It just becomes another tool in the truck,” says Mr. Stallings.
DroneDeploy, a firm that develops mapping software for drones, has customers in 120 countries, says Chief Executive Michael Winn. One used the software to survey 1,000 kilometers—about 620 miles—of highway in Mexico, a few kilometers at a time, using a DJI Phantom Pro 3 drone that helped avoid drug traffickers. The resulting images were so detailed, “he could see a dime on the ground,” says Mr. Winn.
Such applications so far have filled only niches, while some big potential markets, like agriculture, have yet to take off. “Everyone says agriculture will be the biggest application in commercial drones, and then first responders. But the opposite is true—they’re the laggards,” says Colin Snow, an independent analyst who tracks the drone industry. The line-of-sight rule will continue to damp drone use in areas like inspecting, sensing, surveying and mapping.
Still, the rules are about to touch off an era of experimentation for businesses. Those that figure out how to use drones to gain competitive advantage have the chance to get ahead of rivals.
USAA had been experimenting with drones since last year. The company is coy about what inspired the move, but it and other insurers, including State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. and American International Group Inc. had previously gained licenses from the FAA.
The April storm, with hail as big as softballs, and concentrated in the area around USAA’s hometown of San Antonio, could be one of the biggest catastrophes in the insurer’s history, says a USAA spokesman. The Insurance Council of Texas estimated total damages in the San Antonio area at more than $2 billion.
More than a week after the storm, on a hot Friday in south Texas, Ms. Tomasetti’s front yard was full of drone pilots—three teams of two people each—and their multirotor camera drones, manufactured by DJI and 3D Robotics. In four hours they examined the roofs of her home and 11 others, a task that she says would have taken a single adjuster as long as 18 hours.
In the future, says Ms. Tomasetti, drones could save inspectors from the dangers of climbing onto rooftops. These are the kinds of competitive advantages that accrue to those willing to experiment with drones, who may turn today’s insurance adjusters into tomorrow’s drone pilots.
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