Commercial drones with a sting in the tale

From agriculture, Amazon deliveries to aerial taxis, the commercial use of drones is set to explode

The imagery was outstanding and the endorsement priceless when Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed hopped into the cabin of an autonomous passenger drone – flying taxi to you and me – for a five minute flight 200 metres above the ground of his beloved Dubai in September last year.

The successful, very public test of the prototype Volocopter, an 18-rotor, German-engineered machine capable of both autonomous and piloted flight, marked another step forward by Dubai in the international race to fully embrace a technology that less than a decade ago was more widely perceived as the realm of the military, the hobbyist, niche commercial camera operator or blue-sky dreamer.