Drone technology continues to evolve, making tasks such as inventory management in difficult environments safer and more accurate, says Jackie Wu, chief executive officer and co-founder of Corvus Robotics.

It’s no surprise that advances in drone technology owe in part to artificial intelligence, but also due to developments in sensors and computer hardware, Wu says. Through that, drones developed for one task are adaptable to other quite different uses. For instance, he says, drone technology used for medical deliveries in Africa are now dropping off groceries. Likewise, technology used in warehouse drones has evolved, making them quite useful in challenging or unsafe environments, says Wu.

“Cold chain, for instance, is a really difficult environment for any type of robotics to be in,” he says. “You have fatigue on the materials, battery issues, lens glares and things like that from accumulated ice and condensation. This is a really tough environment to be in.”

Drones are not “dumb receivers.” They have AI technology to sense and understand the environment. “But there's no outdoor GPS, there's no signals, there's nothing. These warehouses are big metal roofs with metal racks everywhere. It's almost like a Faraday cage where signals don't really get to the drones. So they have to have some kind of onboard AI for it to work.”

Wu predicts a handful of spatial agents will autonomously do most industrial work in the next two years or so. “Drones are one such form factor, because how else do you get up 40 feet in the air? You're not going to put a humanoid robot on a scissor lift. So,there's going to be a handful of these spatial agents that will do this work. And the space in AI and robotics is changing very, very quickly right now.”