Why Your Drone Needs Apps — Seriously

The Amazon Prime Air. Courtesy of Amazon via thesnowtroopers/Flickr

The BBC recently reported about how mobile phones were smuggled into a Greek jail by lowering them down using a drone. That got me thinking about drones, mobiles, apps … and apps for drones. I know very little about drones, all I know is that they seem to be making the news every single day right now, as the next “Internet of Things” connected device.

So I started researching drones and apps, and one of the first things I noticed was that the connected car is often used as the best example of a drone, in the sense that a drone is controlled remotely, as are many cars these days. Flying cars and driverless cars are a little way off, but the latest cars can indeed be remote controlled by smartphone apps — to start the engine, unlock the doors, check the tire pressure, program a route, etc.

I then came across a manufacturer of a drone — Parrot — and right there on their home page is a link to “Apps”. It appears the apps are used to actually control the Parrot “AR.Drone” in different scenarios.

I then found an independent website advertising itself as “the home of the best drone apps”. It’s like a mini app store but with a handful of extremely specialist apps for controlling drones. 

What’s fascinating is that since the launch of the AR.Drone at CES 3 years ago, an entire community of app developers has sprung up, thanks to Parrot opening up their hardware to third party innovation. Even more interesting is that drones have a loyal following of gamers, who head into open fields and compete. Apps will become essential for gameplay and for tracking progress and scores.

As I browsed this new world of apps for drones, two things struck me: First, drones, wearables, cars, remote sensors — they are all definitely Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the apps being created are often remote controls … or are the entire controls for the device; and second, app developers love jumping on new bandwagons and these new device classes are perfect for creating new apps, partly because apps are essential to control the devices, and partly because they can create amazing new experiences including gamification, business tools and entertainment in conjunction with the devices. I can sense an opportunity here.

As if to prove the point to me, I found an article in National Defense Magazine, dated October 2013, entitled: “The Pentagon is recruiting software developers for a Drone ‘App Store’”

The article is a real eye opener because it highlights that there are huge crossovers between mobile, apps, IoT, software management, internet, drones, the military and big businesses like Lockheed Martin. (A great read for anyone in technology who wonders what the next big thing might be.)

Some highlights from the National Defense article: 

In a service-oriented architecture, individual modules collectively function like a large software application. Owners of separate systems can share software and cooperate, which over the long run could save the Defense Department billions of dollars in software costs, officials predict …

The best analogy to what the Pentagon is trying to do with UCS (www.ucsarchitecture.org) is the smartphone market, says Rich Ernst, team leader for interoperability at the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics …

The intent is not to reinvent the ground control station, but to evolve it to an open architecture so unmanned aircraft owners can reuse software, Ernst says. “We are driving down the cost of inserting new capability into the ground control station.”

As for me, I will stop droning on now, as I have a thousand ideas buzzing around my head … or are they drones?

Terry Hughes is Managing Director of AppCarousel.

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