Up until just a few months ago, the FAA did not allow the use of any drones for commercial use within U.S. airspace, severely restricting growth in the domestic drone industry. However, in late July the FAA gave the green-light to two specific commercial drones: the Scan Eagle X200, developed by an oil company to aid in petroleum exploration, and the AeroVironment Puma (pictured), which will aid oil-spill cleanup and help monitor ocean wildlife.
Many see this as a major step forward for the commercial drone industry, which is forecast to create 70,000 jobs in the next three years and contribute $82 billion to the U.S. economy by 2025. In one interesting example, Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (founded by Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame) just invested $10.7 million in Airware, a startup working to create a standardized software platform for commercial drone operations. In 2015, the FAA's regulations will likely be expanded to allow drones to share commercial airspace within the U.S.
While there are downsides to the expansion of the commercial drone industry (e.g. privacy concerns stemming from stories such as "paparazzo uses drone to photograph Nelson Mandela's hospital room" and "FBI admits to using surveillance drones on U.S. soil"), the potential benefits are significant. Drones can easily access remote areas, they have a low impact on infrastructure like roads, and many are battery powered, resulting in a low carbon footprint.
The range of business applications for remote-operated or fully-autonomous vehicles is immense -- in addition to the areas identified by Meeker, drones have the potential to revolutionize parcel delivery services, from UPS operations in rural areas to (of course) the Burrito Bomber:
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