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Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Human vs. machine story drones on

A drone is doing to take your job. No, not a slinking sycophant, but rather a machine that works longer and harder than you and doesn’t need vacation or sick time.

This sort of warning has been around since at least ’93 — 1793, that is, when Eli Whitney created the cotton gin. But now PriceWaterhouseCoopers predicts a worldwide drone technology market of $127 billion for a nearly unlimited range of applications. The company has established a “centre of excellence” in drones and data analytics in Poland.

PWC is talking about unmanned aerial vehicles and how they’ll transform business and its processes. The biggest chunk of that $127 billion market will lie in what PWC refers to as infrastructure. Lie above it, more precisely, as drones with cameras and data transmission capabilities take over inspection and analysis of infrastructure from people who climb or fly manned aircraft.

Would you do this if a drone could do it instead? PWC doesn’t talk about actuators or robotic devices mounted on drones, but I figure that’s got to be next. Sending a man to change a light bulb 1,700 feet in the air seems like a costly thing to keep doing.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is what happens with no unions. Make yourself valuable or be replaced

Anonymous said...

I'm waiting for the courts to declare drones as persons, as it did for corporations. Corporations own them, so they are the extension of those corporations' personness. Slippery, that slope.