From the food we eat to the photos we see in a magazine, drones are having an increasing impact on our lives. These devices can be everywhere and they can do everything!
Drones – or so called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Miniature Pilotless Aircrafts, or Flying Mini Robots-  are rapidly growing in popularity and have emerged as a very promising market although it is still in an early stage in terms of mass usage and adoption.
The idea was developed in the 1st World War when both the U.S. and France worked on developing unmanned automatic airplanes but while they originated mostly in military applications, their use has been rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, archeological, and agricultural uses.
The last few years, drones’ adoption and usage expansion, have made them quite popular in the fields of: geographic mapping, aerial photography and delivery, gathering information, search and rescue operations, cargo transport and many others. Furthermore, due to the massive investments into this rising industry, the development of hundreds of more uses takes place every day.
Drones’ usage has proved to be extremely beneficial because they need the least amount of energy, effort, time, and reaches places previously, inaccessible. They can also improve accuracy, increase work efficiency and productivity, decrease costs, refine service customer relations, and resolve security issues.
As more and more businesses have begun to realize their potential and scale of global reach, the drone industry has arrived at its big-trend stage.
Information about the US

• 47 percent of Americans are interested in retail drone use, including food delivery
• Seven million consumer and commercial drones could be shipped in the U.S. by 2020
• Giants like Amazon, UPS and NASA are all investing in drone fleets
• Drone delivery could be coming to the US very soon: Package delivery trials are expected to begin “within months,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal report
• Amazon and Google are to begin testing delivery drones above several U.S. cities within months using their own air traffic control system according to the Wall Street Journal
• 2017, was the most significant year yet for commercial drones, and more than 66,000 remote pilots were certified by the FAA in the US alone.
• According to reports, the global agricultural drone market will expand at an exponential 21.35 CAGR from 2018 to 2026, rising to a valuation of US$1,932.6 mn by 2026.
• The impact of commercial drones could be $82 billion and a 100,000 job boost to the U.S. economy by 2025, according to AUSI
• In the US, military spending for drones will tend to come in larger increments
• S. controls 35% of the drone market compared to 30% for Europe, 15% for China, and 20% for the rest of the world

This article was exclusively written by DK Consultants for the AMCHAM newsletter.