How COVID-19 helped the struggling drone industry take flight

Before COVID-19 hit, San Diego Gas & Electric sent technicians up in helicopters to string power lines between towers. The process required evacuating around 24 homes for a couple of days. But the outbreak curtailed that practice, since there was no way to safely remove people from their households for an extended period during a pandemic.

Now the utility has adopted DJI’s Matrice 300 drones for these line-stringing operations—and no one has to evacuate. Its experience moving from manual methods to automated, drone-driven techniques is being increasingly matched across the agriculture, infrastructure, construction, public safety, and energy industries as the pandemic persists, says Cynthia Huang, director of business development at drone giant DJI. (Best known for its consumer drones, the Chinese manufacturer is also the dominant player in the commercial market, where it competes with companies such as Skydio, Inspired Flight, Flyability, Yuneec, and Autel.)

Companies throughout those industries have no choice but to maintain the reliability of vast and complex systems, even as they grapple with the health and safety issues imposed on them by the coronavirus. Drones offer them the ability to do highly efficient data gathering, including taking video and photos and using artificial intelligence to do some onboard analysis.