Only less than a decade ago, one can only imagine the usage of drones in the military sector due to the high cost but lower than that of its manned counterpart. The rapid advancement and lower acquisition cost of computer electronics and sensors technology open up a whole new world of possibilities in the usage of drones for both commercial and consumer sectors. It provides the needed economics of scale needed for the usage of drones in both commercial and consumer market. This should not be mistaken that such drones in anyway are inferior to its military cousins, on the contrary, both Consumer and Commercial (C&C) drones often time are much more advance yet at a fraction of the cost of military units.

C&C drones today comes with vast computational power and advance payload. The unimaginable low-price tag means many are just beginning to explore the possibility of this new found Hi-Tech access. This can be seen by vast increase of usage drones in the U.S. alone. According to Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), estimated number of C&C drones can easily hit 4 million units by 2020 or on the high forecast, 6 million units. According to the published report, the number one application of commercial drones is in aerial photography (34%), follow by Real Estate and Construction/Industrial at 26% each. Other applications includes agriculture (21%), emergency management (8%) and insurance (5%).

The most common usage of drones is surveillance via on-board imagine devices. This includes activities such as tracking, imagine, searching, mapping etc. This is made possible with the availability of vast computational power in drones which took away most of the drone operator’s workload in flying and navigation. It also enables on-board processing of computational model that enable complex mission to be carry out. Multirotor drones which make famous by a company from China, DJI, are equipped with 6 dedicated cameras for the sole purpose of obstacle avoidance outright redefined the safety operation of drone to the next level. DJI also became the world first billion-dollar commercial drone company. In 2017, according to the few reports including those by consulting and investment companies, DJI have a global market share of 70% for consumer drones which carrying hi-end Sony camera as payload. The multirotor type of drone is basically inherently unstable and yet under the basically fly-by-wire system, operator can now operate the drone with ease with little or almost no prior knowledge in operating a multirotor drone thus make it an attractive option for all kind of usage one can imagine.