Emerging drone services: Challenges and societal issues

A recent application using drones for business is the Google project (Wing) approved in early 2019 [25]. Urban Air Mobility projects with drone services, though mainly focusing on delivery of parcels, are taking off in over 60 cities around the world [23]. As with many advances in technology, e.g., smartphones, there is an emergence of a service ecosystem associated with the technology (e.g., an app store marketplace). Similarly, it is not difficult to imagine that a range of services associated with drones will emerge in the near future. The purpose of this article is to discuss the concept of drone services, sometimes referred to as Drones-as-a-Service, and to discuss societal issues with drone services.