With the number of commercial drones expected to soar into the millions in the next few years, operators whose unmanned aircraft malfunction or crash will be looking for places to get them fixed.
Some repair shops authorized by manufacturers to fix smaller drones are already having trouble keeping up with demand.
For several weeks, a California company had a note posted on its Web site referring specifically to the Phantom drone.
Photo: AP
“Temporarily not accepting any new repairs at this time due to high volume. Please check back soon,” it said.
While such waits might be frustrating for operators, it spells opportunity for repair shops keen to diversify and budding drone mechanics who could start lucrative careers repairing commercial drones without having to pay for a four-year college degree.
“I’m trying to hire two experienced drone technicians at US$20 an hour and I can’t find anybody,” New Jersey Drone Academy founder James Barnes said. “This gives kids in urban areas that can’t go to college now a chance to work at a trade and make decent money.”
Northland Community and Technical College in northwestern Minnesota has been teaching unmanned aircraft maintenance for larger military-type drones.
It is expanding its program to include smaller drone repair and school officials are promising a high-paying job after just one or two years.
“The reality is, the people coming out of the trade schools, the technical colleges, places like that, are the people out there getting jobs and they’re getting paid nicely to do it,” said Zack Nicklin, unmanned aircraft instructor at the school in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. “They’re making careers out of this.”
One of Nicklin’s students, Chris Rolfing, said he grew up taking machinery apart, seeing how it worked and putting it back together.
He signed up for drone maintenance and repair after serving four years in the military and hopes his skills can help local farmers.
“I grew up in a farming community and both of my grandpas were farmers so I would like to stay close to the agriculture business,” the 26-year-old said. “This spring I will be working with a few farmers doing some demo flights and getting my name out there to get my business started up.”
In addition to his repair business, Rolfing plans to do his own business doing aerial photography, 3D mapping, and agriculture analysis.
Unmanned aircraft owners basically have three options when their drones need tune-ups or repairs. They can send it back to the manufacturer, send it to a repair shop or fix it themselves.
Most of the smaller shops specialize in hobby grade or low-end commercial grade drones, specific to a few manufacturers. Those drones typically cost a few thousand dollars to buy, and about US$150 to fix, not including parts.
The more expensive commercial drones generally need repair experts, many of whom have backgrounds in manned aviation.
Robotic Skies is building a network of affiliated repair stations around the world. Company CEO Brad Hayden has more than 120 service stations under his umbrella, most of which work on higher-end drones that cost US$10,000 and up.
He said he plans to recruit more shops as needed.
“The industry is always short of avionics technicians. That’s kind of the way it is,” Hayden said. “Our intent is to bring in enough service centers to always meet the demand. We are built for a volume market.”
Thomas Swoyer, the head of the US’ first drone business park, Grand Sky, is looking at creating a repair depot at the North Dakota park for medium and large unmanned aircraft.
The only place to fix large unmanned aircraft now is on military bases and as more of them enter the market, Swoyer said they are going to “need a place to get retrofitted, upgraded and repaired.”
Barnes has an idea to turn used food vendor trucks into portable drone repair stations to move in and out of urban areas.
“I’m not sure we’re quite at the point where you would have them like your basic auto repair shop, with one on every corner. I think one day we will definitely be there,” Nicklin said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”