Drones are going to be a key technology for the foreseeable future: they have incredible consumer, industrial, logistics, military applications, and beyond.
Does the US have a horse in the race, or have China and DJI taken most of the market?
I recall that both Snapchat and GoPro tried to build this exact use case but failed dramatically. Were they too early? Do we struggle with doing drones well here? It seems like a core technology we should care about.
No US drone capability in the sub-$1000 market, AFAIK. Which basically means consumer is dead. There are a few manufacturers for pro/semi-pro (Skydio comes to mind), but they are sure expensive.
My guess is that we struggle with the manufacturing part. It's hard to be in any way competitive with somebody who's got a much bigger scale, in a market that's got razor-thin margins.
It doesn't help that GoPro has always struggled with quality issues, and for their drones that meant they just kept falling out of the sky - not a great way to win the market. And Snapchat's Pixy was a fire hazard, with a recall of every single one of them.
But that also means we'll continue to fall behind on non-consumer applications, because there are no cheap platforms to experiment on. (Sure, General Atomics will continue to build, but rapid innovation is hard)
On the upside, there's no YC company aiming for that platform play, so get your pitch decks in while it's hot ;) Good luck, though. Manufacturing is hard, consumer manufacturing harder, making flying things gets you a fun regulatory environment. If I were to pitch, I'd probably talk to drone-related startups, figure out what their current platform is, what their needs are, what demand is, and if it makes financial sense to offer a slightly cheaper platform in that space first.
Sometimes it seems as if convenience and price are the technologies that are at the top of the list of consumers in the US market, and that other considerations come in a distant third. We seem to pay little attention to our collective goodwill these days.
I hope we can start putting our money where our mouth is, though.
(Adding on instead of making a new comment)
These are the kind of personal robots I am more interested in. I'm imagining an autonomous, voice-controlled (this isn't exactly that, but it's very close) little robot buddy, like a Destiny 2 Ghost. This is productized to be something different than that, but maybe this is a closer form factor (with what seems like useful protective nacelles to prevent it from damaging its environment).
It has wifi, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to have a 5G modem in a more expensive model (DJI has a deep bench at this point, all the way up to agriculture and delivery drones that have serious radio communication arrays).
I feel like with all the companies rushing to humanoid robotics, there should be a place for alternate forms like little drone buddies?
There seems like there could be a really sweet price-to-performance ratio that could open up a $1K or 2K personal robot that isn’t about doing tasks, but about remote sensing and processing?
Does the US have a horse in the race, or have China and DJI taken most of the market?
I recall that both Snapchat and GoPro tried to build this exact use case but failed dramatically. Were they too early? Do we struggle with doing drones well here? It seems like a core technology we should care about.