What do drones, Amazon, Walmart, Google and Facebook have in common? It appears a lot, with all four ramping up their efforts to use drones, but not all in quite the same way and in this week’s regular catch up with Hong Kong Radio 3 ‘sPhil Whelan we chatted about the future of drones and discovered a strong Hong Kong drone connection.

Both Walmart and Amazon have applied to the USA’s FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) asking permission to trial drone delivery and with a Walmart store within 5 miles of 70% of America’s population and Amazon continuing its online onslaught, both have much to gain if they can innovate the logistics chain and have drones deliver.

Google is also looking at home delivery drones through Project Wing, but it’s most recent application to the FAA comes from Project Titan, a project started by an aerospace company they bought last year, that wants to use drones to provide internet access and data harvesting around issues including deforestation.

Facebook’s Aquila project wants to launch a solar powered drone, capable of 90 days of continuous flying, capable of providing internet access to remote areas.

It will take some time for the FAA to resolve if and how to allow Walmart and Amazon access to the sky, but Facebook and Google’s projects using far fewer, less obtrusive, drones being used for internet provision and eye in the sky services may receive approval sooner.

Aside from its commercial use, private drones are on the rise.

And here’s the Hong Kong connection – 90% of all drones sold around the world started life in Shenzhen and are shipped out of Hong Kong with 70% of those built by DJI.

FlyCam HK, Hong Kong’s largest drone retailer, claims there are 5,000 drones being flown around HK and not surprising when you look at the laws, or lack of them, that allow any drone weighing 7 kilograms or less to be flown without a licence.

There’s growing excitement around these flying robots and what their capable of and next week we’ll look at the industries most likely to have and benefit from drones first, but first have a listen to this week’s segment and then share your thoughts on the future of drones (15 minutes 07 seconds).

for Australia’s current drone laws click here