Global drone leader DJI has come under increasingly intense pressure in the US, as successive federal and state measures banning its craft for official use have proliferated amid worsening relations with China – and accompanying security concerns. Though accusations by politicians that DJI UAVs leak data to Chinese authorities have never been substantiated – and flatly denied by the company – the blacklisting has reportedly undermined the firm’s former 70%-plus US market share down to what some estimates say is closer to half now. 

Israel-based hydrogen-powered UAV developer HevenDrones is keeping a very close eye on work in the UK toward creating a 165-mile “drone superhighway,” which is intended to enable a broadening range and rate of aerial activity and services across a huge swath of the nation. Although it is not yet involved in what are the still preliminary stages of that British project, HevenDrones CEO Bentzion Levinson says he believes the program’s potential for rapidly, radically transforming UAV systems, regulations, operation, and tech – including power sources like hydrogen permitting far longer flights – is enormous, and something he’d be keen to join when the time is right.

Trailblazing instant logistics company Zipline — along with its government partners in Rwanda and Ghana – is being honored later this month by the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) for its contributions to global aviation innovation by its medical drone delivery work in Africa. Zipline’s go-to-market director Daniel Blay talks to DroneDJ about being chosen to receive the David Morrison Innovation Award and the company’s broadening, diversifying UAV activities around the world.

In the third and last installment of DroneDJ’s interview with Bobby Healy, the irrepressible Manna Aero CEO pivots from his plans to introduce drone delivery around Europe to discuss his strategy for launch in the potentially enormous US market. That involves certification of Manna’s proprietary UAVs; introduction and expansion of drone transport through widening suburban “cohorts of scale”; and raising the considerable capital that will require with, most likely, a Wall Street flotation. Should he get the company there, Manna might well have reached the solid, advanced state of growth to allow Healy to move on to his next challenge.

Manna Aero CEO Bobby Healy is preparing to nearly quadruple the company’s current potential client base in Ireland with the start of drone deliveries in a large Dublin-area town in a few months. From there, he plans to launch activity in European Union nations he considers ready for aerial services. Healy tells DroneDJ in the second part of our interview why he believes its regulations put the EU in particularly strong position to take the global lead in emerging UAV-based services; how Manna’s full-stack drone manufacturing and operation model gives it a business advantage; and why a trained programmer who successfully built two tech travel sector companies decided drone deliveries would be his next challenge.

StrixDrones, under the eyes of local and international agencies, received its first delivery to its DroneDrop box in Israel just a few weeks ago. We spoke with the company’s CEO and founder to get the rundown on how it went and what the future entails for them.

If a single person were to be designed the “Drone Meister” of US government aerial operations, it might well be Mark Bathrick – the recently retired director of the Department of the Interior’s Office of Aviation Services (OAS), who assembled and oversaw the increasingly diversified use of the world’s largest fleet of non-military UAS. Creator of the agency’s “Drones for Good” program, Bathrick spoke to DroneDJ about how those operations evolved over the past two decades and how it’s likely to continue in the future.

American Robotics CEO Reese Mozer has no beef with drone deliveries, but he thinks all the hoopla surrounding aerial transport of burgers and burritos is drowning out news about farther-reaching UAV activities that are dramatically changing the way businesses operate. He tells DroneDJ about that transformative innovation, and how American Robotics’s (AR) leading role in the complete automation of critical drone services to industry is set to take wing.

San Francisco-based electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle and air taxi company Archer Aviation finished last year with a bang. Now, its co-founders and -CEOs Brett Adcock and Adam Goldstein tell DroneDJ why they think 2022 will be even more exciting.

Flytrex co-founder and CEO Yariv Bash may not be out to change the entire world, but he is intent on revolutionizing the way goods are delivered on the planet with a tightly focused, carefully defined plan of making drones the primary force of that progress.

Everyone loves aerial light performances, but few people ever get a backstage peek at what goes into staging the spectacles. To remedy that, UK- and Singapore-based drone show specialist SKYMAGIC sat down with DroneDJ to offer an idea on how those work ­– and how the company differs from rivals in bringing the skies to life.

We had the opportunity to speak with Autel’s owner and general manager Maxwell Lee while at CES. At the company’s booth, he walked us through what Autel went through to bring its newest drones, the Nano and Lite, to market.

When Maxwell Lee took over as the general manager of Autel Robotics, his family-owned business, in 2020, he knew there would be challenges. What he didn’t expect was that he would be navigating a period of historic tech innovation, speckled by a pandemic, major leadership changes, and supply chain crisis.