Table of Contents
Drone-related job characteristics and applications
Job characteristics
In the following guide, we present job characteristics, directly or indirectly related to the drone market. It is important to remember, however, that this guide is non-exhaustive and somehow subjective, as the drone market changes rapidly and also differs between countries. Details are present in the table 1.
Table 1: Job characteristics of drone-related positions
| Job name | Short characteristics |
|---|---|
| UAVO - drone operator | Required manual skills to be able to control UAVOs, good sight, and practice. Manual control of the drone is demanding, requires the ability to focus for a long time be precise, and farsighted. A good three-dimensional orientation is a must, as well as an understanding of general flight physics. For the flight with a high level of autonomy, 3D imagination is required as well as a general understanding of maps and planning software. At least an elementary understanding of the weather processes is essential. |
| UAV designer/implementor | As drone design is interdisciplinary, a person that targets this position is expected to have skills from various areas including physics, electronics, mechanization, mechatronics, software development, and communication (in particular wireless one). Also, good mathematics basics are essential, and knowledge of the calculation and simulation software is an added value, i.e. to design, calculate and simulate wing cross-section. |
| UAV cameraman | In professional cinematography it is common that UAVO and cameraman are two persons. In this case, UAVO is relieved from movie recording and photo-taking, but the cameraman is limited with drone physics and obviously, also uses the remote, distant camera. For those reasons, the cameraman should be in close contact with UAVO and requires extra skills including specific drone limitations like limited flight time, the limited payload for a camera, delays in controlling the camera because of using an aerial connection to it, limited range of the transmission and so on. |
| Video postprocessing specialist | A person that processes aerial photography and video materials. Nowadays, drone cameras offer decent stabilization, but aerial photography and video filming are slightly different than regular movie recording, mostly because of potential instability (shaking), higher video compression, wider scene dynamics. |
| Volume object 3D scanner and processor | Drones are used to grab photos to obtain later large-scale 3D models (i.e. old buildings). A set of photographer skills are essential, good scene planning and precision flight planning, and controlling skills are a must as it is common that drones must be able to reach all details and photograph them from various angles. In this job, UAVO is usually the same person that operates a drone camera. |
| Infrastructure inspector (power lines, pipes, etc.) | Power line inspections usually require BVLOS skills and certification. Draft inspection can be done with a high level of autonomy, so the ability to use flight planners and understanding the environmental condition, reading maps and plans is essential. Precise monitoring (i.e. close inspection of the power cable bindings) is done with manually controlled flight to make a close approach, so the ability to make precision maneuvers and 3D orientation are important. At least an elementary understanding of the weather processes is essential. |
| Drone educator | Drone education is very comprehensive and interdisciplinary: on the one hand, it requires at least elementary UAVO skills and knowledge on drone ecosystem components, on the other, good tutoring skills to create valuable and intriguing courses. As UAV education is very practical, teachers should hold practice in UAV operation, UAV construction, not just theoretical background. It also requires a good understanding of physics and the weather environment. Obviously, that may be limited in case the course covers only specific scope. |
| Drone serviceman | Working in drone service requires a set of manual skills in mechanics, mechatronics, electronics, and IT. There are two types of positions: those related to the specific manufacturer and those universal, based on open components. The other is rather a niche as many people building drones themselves are also willing and able to service them. Still, manufacturer services are rather popular among amateur users, buying RTF (Ready To Flight) products. Manufacturer-specific services and jobs are somehow easier as components are delivered by the corporation while working in an open, cross-platform drone service requires flexibility on replacing and substituting components and also following the latest trends in the market as well as knowing and following current delivery chains for components. |
UAV Applications
UAV applications increase over time, and so far, we find new application areas instantly. They appear along with enhancements in flight control logic and autonomy level rising, thanks to the technology development. Yet, there are several already well-known UAV applications that we describe below.
UAV applications in general share into the military and civil. We do not consider military-specific applications in this document. Many of them are common, however, and the line between military and civil application blends.
In general, a variety of UAV solutions suit many categories, but each category presents specific requirements regarding airframe type, flight duration, equipment, methods of control, and flight mode. It is also notifiable, that applications differ by flight modes, in particular: autonomy level, operators' qualification understood as VLOS/BVLOS/FPV certification, and most of all: operator skills.
In the following guide, we represent the UAV system characteristics, required for different applications. Details are present in the table 2.
Table 2: Drone applications characteristics and requirements
| Application name | Short characteristics | Drone ecosystem hints on hardware |
|---|---|---|
| Drones in Education | Drones for education cover various levels, from elementary where young pupils learn how to control UAVs to higher education where students and researchers use drones for experimentation and development. For this reason, depending on the level of education, drones with API may be required. For the basic level, indoor, safe-to-fly drones are the best option while for little more advanced students, drones that can be controlled in the team mode (instructor can take over) is a good option. | Depending on the course level and purpose, education may require indoor and outdoor drones. For safety reasons, rather slow and not so powerful ones are suggested. Indoor flying can start with cheap brushed-motor equipped drones, i.e. DJI Tello. For more advanced flying, DJI Mavic and Phantom are good options. Higher education usually involves custom constructions based on Pixhawk/Ardupilot capable FCs to fully enable the power of autonomous flight, programming, and integrating various components. |
| Drones in Film-making | This class of applications cover both occasionally film making, i.e. during wedding and events as well as professional cinematography. Different skills are required, but in any case, reliable drones and rather some >250g (usually much more) are needed to present stable flights. Drones with shared functionalities among two team members are required for professional cinematography, particularly during the recording of the dynamic scenes, where the UAVO function is separated from the cameraman, so it requires systems able to bind two controllers. Because of the drone weight and recording places, it is necessary to present certification and flight skills. Filmmaking requires good operator skills, 3D imagination, some art-soul, and a set of spare batteries to replace, as recording may need re-taking of the scene and there are usually many unforeseen obstacles that extend required operation time. | For occasional recording, any drone with at least a full HD camera (usually at least 2.5k), i.e. DJI Mavic is enough. Note, many of those entry-level drones, even if providing great filming capabilities are limited with stabilization and recording direction, as cameras are front-mounted, thus to make a pan filming, you need to rotate drone (yaw) that usually causes shaking and unstable recording due to the changing wind direction. For professional operations, heavy drones (usually far over 5kg MTOM) are common, and drones with good positioning capabilities (GNSS is usually enough, no RTK needed), decent gimbals, and a set of extra devices, i.e. servos and motors to control professional camera optics are required. An important feature is the ability to wrap/hide/fold the drone's landing gear, to let the camera freely rotate under the drone (opposite, i.e. to the popular DJI Phantom, where landing gear is in FOV of the camera. Professional cinematography drones may cost a fortune. Entry-level drones start from DJI Inspire (some 6k EUR), DJI Matrice series 7-8k EUR) up to Freefly and xFold solutions, hitting with ease over 40k EUR for a platform. |
| Drones in Real Estate | Thanks to the drones, real estate benefits from easy aerial photo-taking, inventory, and even 3D model making. Drones brought a new perspective that was never possible before. Recently, small drones are used to record in-door videos from the perspective of the visitor, to present videos to the buyer. The real estate market often uses UAVO freelancers for it. This application has demand for good and high-resolution photos, and usually, max altitude is limited, so drones with wide lens cameras are needed. Also, post-processing (commercial, open-source) software and PC hardware to handle it is needed, i.e. video processing software like Final Cut, Davinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere, and photo editing software like Photoshop, Corel, Gimp, Darktable is needed. Drones able to shot and save raw photos are advance here, as photo and video quality are essential. Operations are usually manual (with a low level of autonomy), so there is no demand for advanced ground stations. Long flight times are not necessary, and it is usually the ability to plan flight operations. A niche requiring autonomous and ling time flights are i.e. dude ranches inventory where areas can cover up to dozen of a hectare. In such a case, there is a demand for autonomous flight capabilities and also long flight time, so it is considered to use fixed-wing FPV drones here. | Any entry-level drones of semi-professional class fits here and operations are mostly manual, so there is usually no need for additional components, i.e. ground stations other than RC suitable for operations. Sample drones that fit here are Yuneec Typhoon, DJI Mavic, DJI Phantom, Autel EVO. For the in-door flight, a drone with optical position stabilization is needed, but compact in size. A good choice here is the DJI Mavic Mini. In the case of the aforementioned niche solutions, fixed-wing drones are a good solution, i.e. Yuneec Firebird, Parrot Disco, and so on. |
| Drones in Construction and Industry | Applications vary from the industry characteristics, but the most common is to use drones for surveying. The majority of operations require precision positioning; thus, RTK (Real-Time-Kinematics) enabled drones are essential. Also, infrared cameras are frequently required, but high-quality photos and videos are usually not necessary. Monitoring of the highway construction requires flight on a long-distance and drones able to operate autonomously and those with long flight times are preferred. Often an orthomosaic and 3D mapping software is necessary for data post-processing. Some industry applications include special sensors to be mounted on the drone to check, i.e. air quality, gases, and so on, or to send drones to the areas that are dangerous to the human, i.e. Fukushima / Chernobyl nuclear power plants. | Variety of drones fits this application, but it is common to see Yuneec H520 and DJI Matrice drones, as they are RTK enabled. The price for those drones usually is around 5k EUR or more, and IR cameras even pump up the price. For the highway inspection, it is considered to use fixed-wing ones, i.e. senseFly eBee, because of the extended flight time, easily getting up to 50min. |
| Drones in Public Safety and Monitoring | This class of application covers a variety of activities, starting from law enforcement, through critical situation management, disaster handling, and fire fighting. Because of it, a variety of devices is needed with a vast number of functions. Commercial devices available out of the shelf are suitable for the majority of the applications, but some require specialized equipment, i.e. seeking for people trapped in the house under fire requires specialized IR/thermal cameras. Sample firefighter team may benefit from an aerial view to evaluate the on-site situation and make ad-hoc decisions on evacuation using commercial drones, while in case of forest fires, covering large areas, a drone able to fly for a long time and distance is needed, probably a fixed-wing one would be a good choice. Police may use a drone to monitor the crowd and eventually, to check for possible evacuation and safe places, in a case of i.e. active shooting. A drone with good optics and high resolution as well as able to deliver quality photos and video in low light is needed. Many latest commercial drone constructions fulfill those requirements. | Many fire departments and fire law enforcement teams use regular, commercially available constructions, i.e. DJI Mavic and Phantom (the former one is perhaps the most popular drone for firefighters used for an aerial overview). For large areas aerial inspection, requiring long flight times and distances covered, a good option is a fixed-wing drone, i.e. Autel DragonFish or Kestrel. Entry-level professional drone with the thermal camera is i.e. Yuneec H520 and even Mavic 2 Enterprise with a thermal camera and an extra spotlight. |
| Drones in Journalism | Drones in journalism bring a new layer of information and drama, thanks to the ability to present information in a wider scene, using aerial views. Whether it is still photography or video footage, using a drone is much cheaper than a helicopter and even enables aerial shots when it was previously impossible to get them whether to the high cost or other obstacles. As journalism present a wide number of needs, there are both demands on high-quality photo and videos while in case of the dynamic scene for TV news, drone performance and ability to transmit live video signal for a long distance is more important than image quality. In any case, vast of situations and working under pressure means a UAVO needs to possess top-notch flying skills. Most of the operations are done manually but indeed some artistic landscape shots use autonomy. An appearance of the mass scale social media journalism (Facebook, Instagram, and others) forced commercial UAV manufacturers to include even simplest automation for the cheapest and smallest drones, i.e. a “selfie” function, where drone starts automatically, flies away, takes a photo of you and returns back. Larger ones benefit from other “programs” like i.e. “follow me”, “orbit”. This sort of feature brought a new class of sports footage, where a single person can be a sportsman and a drone operator, simultaneously. A non-exhaustive list of common journalism drone missions includes breaking news, traffic reporting, documentary, photojournalism (including travel), sports, disaster reporting, investigative work. | For journalism, a wide range of drones may be used. Amateur journalism for the Internet benefits from small drones i.e. DJI Mavic Mini, as weighing less than 250g enables them to be in any backpack. For professional news, even top-shelf still amateur class devices are suitable i.e. Mavic Pro, Inspire series and for professional footage, FreeFly and DJI Matrice are suitable. In general, professional journalism shares common requirements with professional cinematography. Niche requirements include ultralight and silent drones that are able to fly imperceptibly to the animals, even butterflies, usually mimicking an animal - such constructions are individually designed and delivered. |
| Drones in Agriculture | Applications vary, from precise farming, through crop surveying to fertilization and spraying of the large areas. In any case, a majority of applications require the use of industrial, heavy drones, usually because of a payload needed and distances traveled. Because of the nature of farming, most operations are performed with a high level of autonomy, usually BVLOS. Crop monitoring usually requires multispectral cameras, so commercially available drones are not suitable for this task, anyway, recently advanced image and video processing limits demand on specialized video cameras towards regular, and much cheaper solutions. | Variety of professional drone manufacturers tries to find their position in the agriculture niche. I.e. Parrot manufactures a Parrot Bluegrass drone, equipped with Parrot Sequoia sensor (multispectral camera with 4 distinct spectral bands), dedicate to detect problems with a variety of kinds of crops. Also DJI offers their Agras and MG series as dedicated to agriculture, i.e. Agras T16 (with 16l tank for liquid payload). |
| Drones in Transportation and Delivery | At the moment, drones are used in a delivery dual way: niche solutions i.e. to deliver medical tests from one place to another, and in mass scale for the so-called last-mile delivery of the goods. In any case, it requires a high level of autonomy (actually fully autonomous flights) and because of it, many countries delay the introduction of those solutions. Perhaps one of the first and key players in this field is Amazon, trying to lower costs, replacing human-based delivery with drones. Still, there are mostly no regulations enabling mass scale usage of aerial-based delivery and obviously, distance is quite limited here. In transportation, drones are used mostly for inspection and analysis, to get a bigger view of the problem (i.e. traffic optimization, road planning). Drones also help here to inspect infrastructure i.e. railroads. This speeds up the process and lowers costs. | As applications vary, also equipment needs are vast. For transportation, i.e. railroad inspection, traffic monitoring, a commercial drone (i.e. DJI Mavic, Yuneec H520 and virtually any drone in a weight class of 2-5kg is suitable. Obviously, those models able to accept and perform autonomous flight plans are preferred, and a good visual imaging channel (camera) is a must. On the other hand, for the delivery, specialized, heavy lifters and energy-efficient drones with the ability to fly autonomously, detect obstacles and perform long flights are rather dedicated solutions like i.e. drones for the Amazon Prime Air delivery. As multirotor are not so energy efficient on long-distance deliveries, VTOL planes are considered to be a possible future solution. |
| Drones in Search and Rescue | Drones in SAR applications are nowadays a part of the game that cannot be usually excluded. Whether it is a search for a missing person in the forest, a lost climber in the rocks, or a castaway on the sea, the drone can help to find a person and help to evaluate the situation and get to the person quicker. Also, in some cases, the drone can deliver i.e. medicament, medical equipment like AED (defibrillator), or even just water or food to temporarily support the person in need. A variety of applications has an impact on the drones used. In most cases, an infrared camera, a good video down-link presenting live high-quality video stream is needed, while this class of applications has early adoption of the AI-based tools i.e. to help to identify a person in need autonomously. | Some industrial-standard semi-professional drones are suitable but usually equipped with decent video cameras including thermal ones. There is a variety of drones fitting here, starting from DJI Mavic through Yuneec H520, towards heavier and more durable constructions, i.e. DJI Matrice series. SAR operation at the sea is usually performed during heavy weather conditions, during strong storms, so heavy drones and water-resistant solutions are needed here. |
| Drones in Entertainment | Drones used to entertain people for a couple of years but we do not consider here amateur operations (i.e. flying for fun) using commercial constructions. Two mass-scale applications in this class are drone light shows, as presented i.e. during the Olympic Games opening ceremony in China, and FPV racing leagues. Both focus rather on smaller drones, and while FPV racing uses gully manual flights, drone light shows use complex hardware-software solutions and hundreds or even thousands of same devices, flying in the formation - here, one of the first to be on the market was Intel, providing their solution as a service on demand. Nowadays, there are followers, and in many cases, solutions are based on the ROS (Robot Operating System). | FPV and formation flying focus on rather lightweight drones. Most of the FPV leagues use some 125mm-250mm frames, while formation flying drones are usually custom solutions, oriented towards lightweight constructions, able to fly autonomously, and also being secure and safe - many of them introduce a cage that drones can physically hit one another with virtually no damage to it. |
| Other applications | There is practically an unlimited number of possible applications, i.e. in medical services and in the mid-future, passenger flights i.e. drone-taxis. Some early experiments are done with emergency services, i.e. drones able to deliver medicament to the person stuck in the high mountains, where there is no other help possible or it is delayed. Some early experiments with drones delivering AED (defibrillator) in Dubai city were tested, as drones are not stuck in a traffic jam, so they can reach accident place quicker than any human rescue team. There is also at least a single report that drone (here regular Mavic with modified propellers) was used in Himalaya mountains for delivering information and monitoring i.e. to observe summit climbers. Recently, some cities introduced agriculture-class drones to spray anti-viral liquids, to disinfect streets, bus stops, and so on, because of the SARS-COV-2 virus outbreak. | Those constructions are usually unique, closely tailored into the niche problem they solve, and there is no specific guide here other than such drones usually carry a heavy payload, so some of the larger frames (i.e. Tarot X8, DJI Matrice S1000, and S600 may be used as a starting point for development. |
