David Marcontell
How much did you know about drones in 2013?
Stephen Douglas
Nothing. It was a toy, a little hobby. Little helicopters that you flew around with your kids.
David
Right? Right, but they were out there then the testing was taking place then.
Narrator
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a soy latte delivering drone, here to predict how we might use drones in 2030, discuss the ever-evolving regulatory landscape and debate when flying taxis will finally become an everyday reality. It's Oliver Wyman CAVOK’s David Marcontell and Stephen Douglas. For more information on this episode check out our show notes. Thanks, and enjoy the show.
David
Hello, my name is David Marcontell and I’m a senior vice president and general manager of Oliver Wyman CAVOK coming to you from Oliver Wyman’s downtown podcast in Atlanta, Georgia. I would like to have a conversation today with Steve Douglas, who’s also a vice president within CAVOK, about the future of commercial drones, where we are today, and what it would look like in 2030. So, Steve, are we going to see pizza deliveries by 2030?
Stephen
Actually, Dave, I think we’re going to see a lot more than pizza deliveries, from what I’m seeing, current events show that they’re delivering coffee at the beach in Dubai. Also, the police force is going to start training this year where its mobile unit, it’s both set up like a motorcycle and a drone, but it is truly a drone base vehicle. Also, from what I’ve seen recently is they’ve experimented with passenger service on a drone in Austria.
David
Oh, wow!
Stephen
The market is really moving forward and the more the FAA works with the private sector in industry, the more advancements we’re starting to see, there’s still a lot that goes on outside the US.
David
There’s no question that the applications and uses of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles is incredibly high. We’ve all already seen the photography and cinema that’s already been fairly well-established. Lots of movies are made with drones with all of the photography capabilities. But what’s not very talked about is the ability to surveil or inspect fixed infrastructure, power plants, power lines. You can do some amazing things with the sensor technologies that are being developed in parallel with these drones. Are there any other applications of drones that you find particularly interesting, besides the most obvious about delivering coffee and pizza and air taxis?
Stephen
They’ve been experimenting in the Arctic since around 2013. They’ve been looking at doing ice surveys. They’ve been doing various marine mammal surveys, also pipelines, roads, equipment, oil field type work. They’re also set up an operation that’s able to go out and do surveillance for oil spills. It's called operation Arctic Shield and that was set up in 2015. So, you can see it’s relatively short from 2015, when they started a lot of these projects until where they’re at today. Also, they are doing some mapping with drones on aircraft for damage tolerance pipe inspections.
David
Oh yeah, that’s amazing. It’s amazing, and you know the sensors on these things are just absolutely incredible and what we were able to do with that, both holistically. I know I've read a lot about using drones in our surveillance cameras to be able to look at vegetation near power lines or other fixed structures, so that you can determine when the best time is to start, trimming that back. And then there are the applications that are associated with after disasters. When an earthquake comes in, drones are being used now to surveil the damage to quickly process what needs to take place, big floods and other things like that. Any of these drones are really making a difference in people’s lives and in the response services that come after that. We talked a lot about some of these future opportunities, but what’s being done today, commercially, are there any actual services that are in commercial operation? Not just as test cases, but real businesses that are making a living every day with drone technology.
Stephen
Actually, there is one. It’s in Canada, and they’ve announced where they’re moving in the commercial operations, and revenue generation. They started in 2019 and it’s an interesting drone. It’s the insides, probably three to four by four and it carries packages. So, it lands, delivers, and people go pick up their packages from this drone, UPS. It’s no secret, it’s on the web where they have their UPS truck that pulls up in a remote area. They program the drone, it flies out, delivers the package while they're going down the road to another delivery site and a drone comes back and lands on top of the truck.
David
Are there certain types of applications that seem to make more sense than others? I know I’ve heard about some drone operations in Iceland where they’re delivering food and groceries and other sundries across a big bay that takes an hour plus to drive around but takes 10 minutes or less to fly across. And that’s a commercial operation that’s in place today. But do you see a greater likelihood to point-to-point versus many-to-many type of operations? How does that lay itself out in the timeline?
Stephen
Well, I think, right now, they’re focusing on point-to-point. There are several factors that come into play there. It’s obviously the battery life of the UAS or drone that’s normally about 30 minutes when you’re talking about a small drone. It’s more about point-to-point mileage wise that varies on how long they can go, but they’re also dealing with beyond visual line of sight.
David
What does that turn into for us from a regulatory perspective? Both in the US as well as, say, Europe, what’s got to change in order to be able to adapt and use these technologies and deploy them?
Stephen
Well, I think right now with the FAA’s unmanned aircraft systems integration pilot program, or it’s known as the IPP, there’s still a lot of testing taking place, looking at what that integration would look like, and they’re maintaining operations 400 feet or below to try to understand, what does that look like. There’s a large percentage of the population that are still uncomfortable with drones and very uncomfortable with them flying overhead. It’s going to take some time to get that into a city type environment.
David
Yeah, there are for sure some fairly significant attitude, or even cultural challenges that exist out there, ranging from privacy concerns — people are just not comfortable with that drone being able to hover over a backyard or landing outside your front door — to the obvious events that occurred just a few months ago at Gatwick Airport in the UK, where we had drone incursions into a controlled airspace which created a safety hazard. So, what do we do as an industry to try to help protect that? Is that a technological answer? Is that a regulatory answer or do you think it’s a little bit of both?
Stephen
I think it’s a little bit of both, but there has been UAS detection going on even before 2015. They’ve partnered up with various agencies, even the FBI has been involved in May of 2016 to evaluate what different drone detection technology would look like. There are some companies out there today where they develop some software, they’re able to tell when they’re in the no-fly zone and pick up on those UAS’s that are there.
David
What do you think has to happen technologically? Most of the regulation is centered around fairly lightweight drones at 55 pounds in total. Of course, they are currently restricted from carrying cargo or packages. But even if that restriction is lifted, if you start adding packages into that, you’re only talking about 20 pounds, 30 pounds maximum and then that doesn’t have a very long range. What has to happen? What has to change in order for us to see some of these more aspirational, futuristic kinds of uses?
Stephen
Well, obviously, the battery life has to change, and I believe there’s some progress being made on that. They’re looking at battery life of one hour to get into a passenger type service. Maybe it’s 45 minutes, maybe an hour. Again, that is a point-to-point operation. Maybe it’s around the freeway where they set up a designated area that the drones will land and pick up people and go to the next point. But again, it’s got to be within that hour right now for technology. Keep in mind, the battery has some weight to it too so, you’re adding to that. And when you mentioned about the small UAS right now, they’re holding up to five pounds, 10 pounds. As I mentioned, with medical supplies or even experimenting with some packages. And it looks like that range is about 12 miles somewhere around there, give her take.
David
Excellent, interesting, interesting. Well Steve, thank you very much for your time today. This has been most fascinating. It will be really exciting to see the pizza is coming around, along with your coffee. So, you could just have that drone interaction every day, all day long.
Stephen
I’m waiting for my Starbucks. The Oliver Wyman Velocity podcast is brought to you by the global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. If you enjoyed today’s show, we invite you to subscribe, so you’ll be notified whenever a new episode goes live.
For more information, follow us on Twitter @oliverwyman and read our latest transportation insights at Oliverwyman.com. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
