By the end of 2014 the average observer in a city with a population over 300,000 in the United States will see a drone aircraft in the sky once a month or more. By 2017, every day.
My understanding is that most drones simply aren’t visible because they’re small and high up and light colored, and this is why drone operators can do things like loiter over a house for several hours without the inhabitants and villagers going ‘Oh my god! There’s an American drone hanging around! Quick go tell our Taliban guy to abort today’s mission!’
Interesting prediction, but I think you’re over-estimating the effectiveness of “an average observer.” Unless you mean “someone who explicitly is looking for such things” when you say “observer.” I go days or weeks without noticing planes in the sky; am I significantly below average as an observer, are drones in cities going to be much more common than planes here, or are drones much more noticeable than planes by 2017? I think one of those would have to be true for this to happen, and I would find any of them surprising.
By average observer, I exclude people actively looking for drones (or other things) in the sky, and I exclude people with training (police? military? spies?) on drone-spotting.
I have been very wrong before! See you (and some drones) in a year!
I just realized that I was assuming “drone” to mean “aerial drone”. But it’s quite plausible that ground-based drones will take off by 2017, which would almost certainly be more visible than UAVs. Self-driving cars alone could plausibly account for this, if we stretch the use of ‘drone’ (wikipedia explicitly includes semi-autonomy in its drone page). I’ll give my estimates for your predictions at 15% for the 2013 prediction and 20% for the 2017 but note that it will be hard to either confirm or deny either of these predictions unless drones are truly prolific or unused.
As a side note, I work on a drone and don’t see one every day.
By the end of 2014 the average observer in a city with a population over 300,000 in the United States will see a drone aircraft in the sky once a month or more. By 2017, every day.
My understanding is that most drones simply aren’t visible because they’re small and high up and light colored, and this is why drone operators can do things like loiter over a house for several hours without the inhabitants and villagers going ‘Oh my god! There’s an American drone hanging around! Quick go tell our Taliban guy to abort today’s mission!’
Interesting prediction, but I think you’re over-estimating the effectiveness of “an average observer.” Unless you mean “someone who explicitly is looking for such things” when you say “observer.” I go days or weeks without noticing planes in the sky; am I significantly below average as an observer, are drones in cities going to be much more common than planes here, or are drones much more noticeable than planes by 2017? I think one of those would have to be true for this to happen, and I would find any of them surprising.
By average observer, I exclude people actively looking for drones (or other things) in the sky, and I exclude people with training (police? military? spies?) on drone-spotting.
I have been very wrong before! See you (and some drones) in a year!
I just realized that I was assuming “drone” to mean “aerial drone”. But it’s quite plausible that ground-based drones will take off by 2017, which would almost certainly be more visible than UAVs. Self-driving cars alone could plausibly account for this, if we stretch the use of ‘drone’ (wikipedia explicitly includes semi-autonomy in its drone page). I’ll give my estimates for your predictions at 15% for the 2013 prediction and 20% for the 2017 but note that it will be hard to either confirm or deny either of these predictions unless drones are truly prolific or unused.
As a side note, I work on a drone and don’t see one every day.
Probability?