Security and surveillance are one of the biggest growth areas in the ever-expanding UAV sector. While it’s a relatively recent addition to enterprise toolkits in many industries, the use of drones to provide aerial assessments of activities on the ground is actually a return to form for the technology, which has seen some of its most ambitious development in defense applications.
The reasons are clear. Aerial vehicles can cover vastly more terrain than slower, clumsier ground-based surveillance systems — which is why they’ve been a key component of military and law enforcement applications for decades. But drones, which are smaller, cheaper, and more efficient than manned-aircraft like helicopters, have very quickly democratized access to aerial security and surveillance and opened up the skies to companies of all sizes across sectors.