DJI’s Romeo Durscher on Unification in the Drone Industry

In a market as burgeoning as the drone industry, it can be difficult to get companies, municipalities and users all on the same page. Creating agreeable standards is difficult to do across a town let alone multiple continents.

Understanding how to best educate the public on the uses and benefits of drones is thus an important mission of those involved with the devices in any respect.

Disconnects between drone pilots and the public can be hard to overcome, and each region needs to be addressed differently.

“In the United States, if a firefighter flies a drone the public is happy. If a police officer flies a drone, the public is very ‘Hey what’s going on here?’,” Romeo Durscher, Director of Public Safety Integration at DJI said. “This doesn’t happen in Europe because there is a different mentality to law enforcement.”

As Durscher points out, creating a uniform set of standards for the industry is problematic because of regulation and reaction from the public.

“Knowing that information means we can adapt the way we build UAV programs in the United States so that we can mitigate those concerns from the public,” Durscher explained.

Education and transparency will continue to build public trust, but the entire industry will have to be behind the initiative.