What a difference a year makes.
Last year at this time, I reflected back on the news and trends of the commercial drone markets of 2014 and wrote about the mixed state of affairs in the U.S. Back then, drones got considerable media hype and you would have thought that drones could do anything from guide your car in the wilderness, to save the planet from starvation. In reality, we were just beginning to see the very first FAA grants of regulatory exemptions for commercial activity—which was nothing more than filming on closed sets.
Contrast that with this year, one in which we’ve seen more than 2,500 Section 333 grants for all kinds of commercial activity and the press’s narrative that ‘drones are cool’ turned to ‘drones are a headache’. Even so, there’s more going on than just public consternation.