This is a list of all the best drone uses for business. A while back I kept seeing articles where people were using drones in ways that kind of surprised me. While some of the ideas on this list are not necessarily groundbreaking, maybe you’ll be inspired by one of them. On the other hand, some of the more out of the box uses for drones might not be something you’re capable of for one reason or another. Some uses are probably still prohibited without specific FAA permission. Either way, this list will include everything I’ve found, including things that may not exist yet. I’ll start with the most obvious and work my way out from there.
Photography/Videography
This category is obviously going to be a big one, as it kind of includes any use of drone video and photography
Marketing/Advertising
- Real Estate
- Landscaping
- Golf Courses
- Outdoor advertising companies
- Infrastructure implosion
Construction Progress
- Some companies have their own drone programs so that they don’t have to hire another company to do work they will need on a regular basis. Check these guys at Skyswoop out for their offering of construction shots. This can be a great niche if you can find a construction company that needs these services. In my experience though, they require a lot of insurance and some even ask to be a loss payee.
Special Events
- Weddings – This niche has made such an impact that this is where Wedding Drone New York focuses their business efforts.
- Community events – My drone company was recently hired to take aerial video of a run for a local non-profit. While this could make some great marketing material, I haven’t seen a whole lot of this around just yet.
- Concerts – Aerial video of concerts can be really compelling. Airvuz is a well-known drone company specializing in aerial videos at concerts. Check out their video at Burning Man. Also, check out this video cnet did on the use of the Verity Lucia drone for indoor concerts.
- Sporting events – Sometimes you will see a quick drone shot as some sort of b-roll around a stadium at a major sporting event, but that would require permission to fly in a TFR. There is even a drone specifically designed to capture high intensity action sports. Or you could just watch this video of Patrick Reed knocking a drone out of the sky with a golfball. That’s sports related, right?
Mapping/Surveying/Agriculture
Surveying – This is a niche that requires some higher end drones with great cameras so that the property being surveyed can be accurately mapped. Another aspect of this is that once you have the data, you need access to the software that can properly (and accurately) stitch the photographs together. One piece of software that is great for this application is called Pix4D, which is software you download to your computer. DroneDeploy is another alternative that is cloud based and allows you to harness the power of their hardware when stitching photos. Finally, if you are serious about this niche, these Aeropoint ground control points will seriously up your accuracy game.
Crop Scouting – The agriculture industry has also begun to see the value in the amounts of data provided by any automated drone flight to create maps. Farmers can use NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) or VARI (Visible Atmospheric Resistant Index) information from orthomosaic maps to determine crop health in various parts of their fields. This information could be invaluable to ensure a good crop and is already being widely used.
Infrastructure Inspections
Roofs
Buildings
Bridges
Aircraft
Railways
Roads
Oil Pipelines
Delivery of Goods
Consumer Goods
Food
UPS
Vaccines
Emergency Services
Fire Services
Search and Rescue
Wildlife Management
Wrangling cattle
Protecting wildlife from poachers
Wildlife studies
Information Analysis
Traffic Flow Studies
Volumetric Measurements
Law Enforcement
Gathering evidence at a car accident
Surveillance on active crime scene
Security
Wireless Internet Access
Shoot me an e-mail if I’m missing something that you think should be included in this list of best drone uses for business.