It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a sophisticated flying video sensor!
There was a constant flow of people streaming through the Drone Pavilion at InfoComm 2015, where attendees marveled at the drones and tried to come up with an excuse to get their hands on one.
For the past year, drones have been all the hype for the AV industry. But will they really present a wealth of opportunity to AV integrators?
- “It’s real technology, and it’s got a real connection to AV,” said David Labuskes, Executive Director and CEO of InfoComm International. Labuskes highlighted several applications currently utilizing drone technology to increase efficiency, such as in agriculture to survey crops and irrigation. “But I don’t think we should pretend that it’s also not really cool new toys, and everyone in our industry loves cool new toys,” he added.
InfoComm added the all-new Drone program to this year’s agenda to educate AV professionals on the opportunities to expand their businesses with drones, and to allow them to get their hands on these really cool devices. In conjunction with Stampede and the Unmanned Vehicle University, InfoComm’s Drone Pavilion (Booth 7042) and classroom training sessions have been ongoing fixtures of the convention this week, and will continue through Friday afternoon.
“It’s exciting, and it’s amazing to us the interest in the program,” said Jason McGraw, InfoComm’s SVP of expositions. “It’s really more talking about what is the business opportunity for the AV integrator — the oil and gas industry, 3D train mapping. There’s a lot more to it than just flying the RC thing around. There are payloads and video signals, [and] there’s debate around regulatory issues with the FAA. So we’re trying to address a lot of that in the program.”
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