How to Build a Drone Control App with Cost and Features? [2024]

Are you curious to know How to build drone control app? In this blog, we discuss drone control software development process including the features, business models, and costs involved in building a drone controller software.

“Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.” ~ Bill Gates

After hearing about drones what comes into your mind? It’s nothing more than a tiny piece that has wings and can fly in the sky. That is the epic picture of the Drone you have had in your mind for a long time. Earlier during the war times or even in the military, drones were a compact solution for army soldiers to rescue difficult areas. 

Or, maybe you went to a party and saw drones flying above your neck, capturing the pics. But how? Ahmm…. That won’t be your cup of tea. 

Who would ever think that this tiny device could someday serve a big automated industry; greater than photography; and many other industries? Nobody does! But it’s possible today. Now it has turned into new levels and horizons. It is needless to say there is very little drones can’t do. 

From a business point of view, there is always a great need and demand for drone control software. Being an entrepreneur or an expert in the industry would be a great chance for you to develop a user-centric application. 

Do consider everything you need as an industry expert. What are the vital things you can put inside the application to serve people uniquely? We have covered in this drone controller app development blog, the critical points that would be essential to involve while developing an application. 

So let’s proceed with the market snippets to give an advanced view of where the industry of drone software is today and what the bottlenecks that would need to be developed to create a more productive application. 

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Let’s begin!

Market Snippet for Drone Control Software

• As per the survey, the drone software industry had a revenue of $2.85 B in 2016 and will reach $12.33B by the end of 2024. 
• The top players in the drone control software industry are PrecisionHawk, 3D Robotics, DroneDeploy, and Drone Vault.
• The total shipments in the niche industry are increasing at a rate of 66.8%. 
• The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) in the US is the largest Drone market which has completed over 100 new assignments to operate drones alone in the US. 
• A large range of commercial applications raised in the drone controller app development is construction, agriculture, insurance, and many more.
• With the emergence of the FAA, we have seen a rise in the Drone market and Drone manufacturers are likely to invest in this full-flash app industry.
• The sales of drones face decent revenue of $1.25 billion in 2020, as per Statista. 
• The leading forecast giant, Goldman Sachs, has predicted that this will not be going to stop. The industry would be growing and will reach a hundred billion dollars by serving commercial and government sectors in the coming years. 
• The industry has not only specific to certain areas, but it is popular in the other fields as well in agriculture drones can be very useful in monitoring the life of crops or managing the irrigation and fertilization. Using drones, today people can spray 40 to 60 times more fertilizers than ever before. 
• In the construction industry, drones are a useful factor in monitoring regularly to check whether their lands are safe or not. This is an inspection process that can be done just in 15 minutes using a drone application. While in the past it would take 10 to 11 hours or even a few days. 

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The impact of drone technology could be easily understood using the above points.

In the past when we had no sincere technology to figure out the risk of disasters. And for every disaster, the banks need to pay an insurance claim to the people. Can’t it be a great thing if we have a drone application, so people get to know before about any disaster? Plus the Insurance companies or banks also get relief with the huge sum they get to pay to the people for their land insurance.  Further in this blog, we are going to discuss How to build drone control app?

With new drone applications, it can be possible to successfully deliver solutions to different industries like agriculture, disaster management, and real estate. The global usage of drones is everywhere now. So, Drone apps are a reliable solution for industries to reduce the cost of any work.

 

Need of Drone Control App Development?

Drones have been a buzzword in the past but actually, when we look and encounter what is drone we must get to know that it is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). When talking about its specification, it is a multi-router helicopter which propelled with the ability to revolve at a certain height and is controlled with a small remote. 

The drone controller application is the interface that gives the user the ability to control and perform the execution of their tasks; it can be critical or daily activities. The app gives the freedom to the user to make the most of their time with accuracy using the drones and their features. 

Let’s get to know in brief about the history of drones and how drones are great tools for different areas. 

Where the drones have started?

Looking back to the past, Drones were first seen in 1915 when it was a part of military surveillance for security purposes. It was reliable and handy equipment that was used at the time of War or attack only. But today, as time has changed, the role of drones has also changed. It is not only involved in military purposes but is used in other industries as well. 

That’s how the drone niche application can serve multiple purposes like sports, traffic control management, natural disasters, the insurance sector, and agriculture. In 2022 it is the most interesting and exciting area for people who want to become viral in an instant. In the video-making industry like YouTube creators in a large number used drones for creating 360-degree next-level videos for their end-users. 

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Some of the industries where drone technology is involved in a greater way to influence the masses are;

•  Agritech Mobile App Developmentsurveillance and mining
• Aeronautical, 
• agriculture, 
• construction, 
• security, 
• energy, and its utility, 
• defense industry, 
• and the telecom sector. 

Areas Where Drones Controller Apps Can Be Useful

We have already discussed the areas where a drone flight controller app would be beneficial for your business. Now let’s come to find out the opportunities lie in the drone sector. 

The needs and opportunities vary with the demands of the different industries. We have discussed a few of them. 

1. Warehouse management industry: A fully automatic navigation system has sensors to monitor every kind of functionality like observed detection, code scanning, or any bugs in the architecture. It would be great to prepare the autonomous system for indoor droning to manage the stock inside the warehouse and conduct regular inspections. 
2. Surveillance Industry: Talking about the surveillance industry, we can easily see that drones can detect far-point things even at night with their cameras. It increases the overall performance and the security of the operations. If multiple drones would work in sync then it would trigger a great impact on the surveyor, which human eyes aren’t able to monitor. 
3. For Emergency: There are times when people are looking for some kind of emergency device that can provide solutions for us. For emergencies, drones can be a reliable feature to control in real-time, for video streaming, and to do alerts of fire nearby. Drones are saviors in arranging the blood; in times of emergency, they would deliver a precise landing. 
4. Automatic Inspection: Another application where the drone would be useful is the automatic inspection sector like in the Turbo wind inspection or the tower inspection. A drone can be used as a full-time device to automate every task. It reports them to the engines or the other devices in real-time in a synchronous manner. 
5. Predict leakages: With the integration of AI and ML algorithms, one could easily detect and report any anomalies, leakages, or corrosion and report it to the connected platform for reconstruction.

Hence, with the above points, it is easily understandable how vast the usage of drones in our day-to-day lives is as well as the crucial areas that need keen observation. 

Features to be Included in Drone Control App Development 

Here are some important features that should be use in drone control app development process.

• Intelligence Integration: We use intelligent algorithms widely on a larger scale. The algorithm helps to perform various activities with accuracy in real-time like object detection, and tracking navigation prevents any leakage detection. 
• Connectivity: Connectivity is an important factor to add so that the admin can control his dashboard and monitor any mysterious activity. 
• Cloud server storage: To store the data Clouds server would be a better option for your business. For example; Dropbox or SAP or mapping or Drone deployment.
• Integration payloads: Payloads are also essential to regulate drones. Using the payload you can access various plugins in the Drones.
• Custom Dashboard: It is another important feature for the user, to have their own unique and customized dashboard. They can inspect and control everything virtually. As per the requirement of the application, the Dashboard has to be customized with templates, widgets, payload integration plugins, and many more features that are essential for building a specialized high dashboard for the users. 
• Virtual Drone: Virtual drones are used to test customized drones, whether they are regulated or not.
• API integration: With the third-party API integration it would become easier for the businesses to develop their drones quickly. 
• Scalable: A fast and scalable application is much needed for the business that shall meet all the real-time specimens and complexities of business. 

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What Technologies Should Used in Drone Controller App Development 

Now we have discussed technologies implementation to build the drone controller application development. Here in detail let’s understand the important APIs and SDKs. 

• FlytBase SDK, API: 

  • FlytBase is considered one of the popular Drone SDKs to build great applications with full control by the developer. 
  • It includes features like sensors, cloud services, security level, sheet management delivery, and business management to develop one stand-alone solution for the business. 
  • There are further SDK and APIs like flytOS which reduce any kind of collision and give proper video streaming at the end. 
  • There is a flight cloud and flight ticket for the same connectivity of the application to the API. You can attach it to your application. 

• DroneKit SDK and API

  • A drone kit is a 3D Robotics platform that is for developing Drone applications. It helps to develop features like live telemetry intelligence, path planning, and autonomous flight. 
  • It is an API that is free to use so that you can develop it in a customized way to give more functionality to the application. 
  • Along with the APIs can easily store, share, and slides data log information, to give flawless connectivity to the application to develop a good real-time drone control software.

• DJI SDK and API

  • Talking about one more important SDK to developing Drone controlling software; that is DJI. 
  • It consists of several features to give a seamless experience for the users in real-time. 
  • These APIs easily help to detect any of the obstacles in between, live video feed control, telemetry of the aircraft to sensor their data camera monitoring, to take the pictures, and control the battery support. All of these you can do remotely using this API.
• There are a few more SDKs in addition to the DJI that helps to create great drone products like the Spark series vacuum series. 
• US SDK, onboard SDK, and payload SDK. 

• Parrot SDK: 

  • It is another drone controller API that gives the developer the freedom to develop the application using the free code repositories and clone them into the app structure. 
  • It can add more features to your application as you can remotely control your drone, receive the live streaming data, send the autopilots plans, update your drone, save the media, and other important documents. 

SDKs work very fine with the code architecture. Hire an expert developer to develop and merge the SDK with the API.

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Important Steps to Develop Drone Control App

Till now we have discussed so many important things to develop drones. It is the time to understand more about the important guideline and policies that would align and understand well. 

To develop a strong application, you must have certain things to be kept in your mind. 

• The first thing that needs to be focused on is the UA design. Designing is an important factor that can boost your traffic and user experience and ultimately your revenues.
• Another important process is the automation testing of your Framework. Quality testing engineers can perform mobile automation testing using their automation frameworks like Selenium or Appium to figure out every failure or bug in the application before giving it to the end user. 
• It is advisable to perform a monitory inspection of every point before launching to the app store. 
• You must go with the guidelines which should be essential to deploy your application into the Android or iOS Play Stores don’t miss any of the guidelines to downgrade your App quality in the future. 

Popular Drone Controller Softwares Are Below: 

• B4U fly (one of the most popular drone control software)

This application will give you the correct information under the five-mile radius about the places where you can fly and about the places that have some kind of obstacle where you did not fly. 

In the case when you want to fly your commercial Drone you need to have a legal license. 

• Hover

It is another important application that will give the correct mapping of the destination location. So that you can get additional information about the weather. In case you want to fly it will ensure your safe journey. It will also give you kinds of features like the weather, temperature, wind precipitation, and other important information. 

• DroneDeploy

Have you ever heard about your Flying Machine? DroneDeploy will give you the ability for advanced light planning and autonomous control. You can just select the coordinates and control your Drone. It follows the coordinates and you can see the drone flying. 

It will give you more control over your drone and more exposure so that in the time of emergency you don’t have to worry. 

• UAV Forecast

Using the UAV Forecast it is simple to detect the weather conditions in your nearby area and get the information in real-time. In addition to that, it helps you to get to know about the wind the precipitation of the clouds, and weather information without even flying to that area. 

These are focused weather apps to give you a range of information and keep you aware. You too can develop any such kind of app or another niche where the drone is capable of solving real-time issues. 

Drone Controller App Development Cost:

drone control app development process includes the nature of complexity, APIs, the technology’s feature implementation, and the price of the developer to deploy everything in the structure. 

On behalf of concluding every pinpoint because to create the Drone control software would go a little high to be around $45k to $55k. 

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Wrapping Up!

The scopes are endless in the Drone control software. In the future, the IoT and AI will have more impact on the apps and their usage.

It is high time you must think about the development of niche apps. In the blog, we have covered things that are important for development, if you need any kind of assistance you can always connect to us.

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