Unmanned Systems MarketsLike many of you, I receive numerous ads for market research studies. In order to excite our interest, they often contain a few snippets of facts. I decided to combine all these“snippets” with the goal of forming a coherent vision of the future of unmanned systems markets.

You can’t get there from here

In addition to examining market research reports, I contacted a few thought leaders within the profession. I also posted questions about unmanned markets in the social networks of LinkedIn and Quora.

For such a hot topic, I received surprisingly few responses. Typical was Greg Moeller’s response. Greg, an entrepreneur and Managing Director of GGK LLC, posted this comment:

“Bill, there are no really good free sources for the information you seek. Frankly, even paid sources are questionable because what many of us think about as the primary ‘market’ right now is a single customer – the U.S. DoD. Because the DoD is a market with a highly concentrated customer base and a very fragmented supplier base (at least for unmanned
systems), markets in the traditional business sense have yet to solidify. In fact, my opinion is that ‘unmanned systems’ is a technology and not a market.

Good examples of markets where ‘unmanned system’” are being used include horticulture (see Harvest Automation), warehouse automation (see Kiva Systems), medical care (see Vecna and iRobot).

Anyway, great question! Probably not the answer you’re looking for, but this is a topic I have spent a good deal of time thinking about. “

So if you are not sure what the future will bring for unmanned systems, you are not alone.

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