As the largest American maker of consumer drones, 3D Robotics Inc. sees big opportunities in selling mini-helicopters with cameras, sensors and whirling propellers that buzz like angry hornets.
The Berkeley company expects to sell thousands of the pizza-sized drones — for about $1,000 each — at home and abroad this year. Tech-savvy customers want them for capturing wave-shredding surfing runs in the Pacific, monitoring oil and gas pipelines in remote regions, and other uses.
3D Robotics is out in front of dozens of California companies jumping into the nascent business of selling drones to consumers and commercial enterprises, just as companies in the state did earlier when the drone market consisted largely of one customer: the Pentagon.
Although military drones were born in Southern California and are still built here, 3D's drones will be built outside the country.
Comments
Congratulations Chris. This is good to read. I've been using APM 2.x and now Pixhawk for just over two years and remain very impressed with the entire technical and business model that 3DR has. The partnership struck with international developers of the ArduPilot flight software and open sourcing of the hardware has paid off to make 3DR the bar to reach by all others. The broad use of your technology already is fascinating to discover. Well done to everyone involved.
Congrats Chris!
Way to go Chris!
It is nice to be on the cutting edge and out in front!
Regards,
TCIII AVD