When you hear the word drone, what comes to mind? Most people think of fun consumer recreational copters that capture incredible video from the sky. Others think of military drones that spy on battlefields and drop bombs.Its true that drones are transforming photography and war. But the categorys biggest impact may be in business.What is a drone, anyway?A drone isnt an RC helicopter. Its 2025, and time to shed that view and embrace what a drone really is. A drone is a robot that moves by flying rather than rolling or walking.More than that, drones are by far the most capable and useful robots we have. They can move about in any environment without bumping into things. They can fly down air shafts, under vehicles, five miles away and 5,000 feet high.Nearly all these flying robots use AI in a breathtaking range of ways.Because of the power and flexibility of modern drones, the business and enterprise drone industry is growing fast, transforming business operations across industries. Which industries use drones? Listed in order from biggest to smallest users, they include energy, construction, agriculture, mining, real estate, public administration, waste management, transportation, insurance, media, telecommunications, healthcare, education, science, and others.Even the military sector is a heavy user of drones for non-military purposes.While the overall drone market size was estimated at $73 billion in 2024,according to Grand View Research, the business market for drones was $32 billion that same year,according to IMARC Group.Future projections range wildly, from 10% annual growth exceeding $54 billion in five years (again,Grand View Research) to nearly 27% yearly growth reaching $126 billion by 2030 (360iResearch).In other words, the growth of the business and enterprise drone market ranges from incredibly fast to spectacularly fast.Weve become used to a general plateauing of hardware improvements in technology. PCs are all fast now, and massive amounts of storage are cheap. This years smartphone crop is more or less like last years. Moores Law has really slowed.But drone hardware capabilities improve super fast. Constant boosts in battery efficiency, AI-powered autonomous systems, and enhanced imaging sensors all make each new crop of drones much better than the last. And AI is making drones far more capable and increasingly autonomous.Inspections made easyLook at how drones have radically improved just one task performed by many industries: inspection.Construction and real estate, energy companies, and many other industries used to send a worker climbing slowly to high, low, cramped, or dangerous places or capturing details from an airplane or helicopter. Now, its trivial to put a drone in the air and do the same inspection at a tiny fraction of the former cost. Drones can quickly and thoroughly (and because of the low cost, frequently) inspect power lines, utility poles, pipelines, bridges, cell towers, industrial boilers, chemical storage containers, construction sites, fermenter tanks, pressure vessels, heat exchangers, storage silos, wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric facilities, dams, agricultural fields, quarries, and all manner of confined spaces.Their flexibility also makes them compatible with a wide range of applications. For example, drones like the Matrice 300 RTK have transformed the mapping of challenging terrain without exposing survey crews to hazardous conditions. Drone deployment for surveying can produce multiple mapping outputs, including 2D and 3D orthomosaic maps, LiDAR point clouds, 3D models, thermal maps, and multispectral maps, providing surveyors with everything they need fast and cheaply.Over the next five years, drones will get even more advanced AI and automation, better cameras, faster connections, longer flying times, higher payload capacity, and more. When people think about autonomous robots, they imagine humanoid robots living and working alongside people in society. That may be possible, but its also decades away. Meanwhile, autonomous drones will acquire real-time decision-making, object recognition, and near-full autonomy. Theyll even come back and charge themselves, then re-deploy automatically (actually, this capability already exists).In other words, the first widely deployed autonomous robots will be enterprise drones (and battlefield military drones).The rise of the drone platformA noteworthy trend in the drone industry is the emergence of Drone-as-a-Service (DaaS) business models, in which businesses can rent drones and related services rather than buying drones and programming them in-house.But even in-house deployments will increasingly be seen as using drones as part of a larger system or platform for carrying out a specific role within a company. The best expression of this idea comes from DJI, the Chinese drone leader that owns 70% of the global drone market.Late last month, the company announced its new Dock 3, which it calls a Drone in a Box.Designed to work with the companys new DJI Matrice 4D and DJI Matrice 4TD drones, the product is targeted at public safety (police and security) and infrastructure maintenance across all industries.The drones have three cameras that work together as a complete system. A wide-angle camera captures large areas in a single shot, a medium-zoom camera gets closer looks, and a powerful telephoto camera can examine objects from far away with fine detail. Plus, they have a Laser Range Finder. The Matrice 4D is designed for high-precision mapping and surface inspections, while the Matrice 4TD is equipped with an infrared thermal camera and a new auxiliary light with 100 meters of coverage.Companies can mount The Dock 3 on top of a vehicle, which can support two drones. (This enables one drone to always be in the air while the other is charging.)And DJIs new D-RTK 3 Relay Fixed Deployment Version can be added to work without interference from nearby sources of electromagnetic radiation. Its also super rugged. The dock can work in temperatures from -22 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Its water- and dust-resistant, and the drones it works with can fly in freezing rain and high winds.The new Dock 3 integrates with DJIs existing FlightHub 2 through a seamless cloud-based connection that enables advanced remote operations. That means anyone can drive to remote, hostile locations with the drone and park while remaining mostly inside the vehicle. A skilled operator working from the comfort of home on the other side of the world can control it.FlightHub 2, the management software that controls Dock 3 remotely, processes operation data, and converts drone footage into actionable 2D and 3D models. It also has a Virtual Cockpit feature, giving operators an interface designed to be intuitive; its divided into Map Window, Livestream Window, and Flight Dashboard components. This interface revolutionizes drone control through Mouselook camera manipulation (enabling operators to control camera movements with a mouse), one-click flight commands for rapid navigation, and split-screen viewing that combines geographic context with live video feeds.The system enables powerful applications, such as persistent monitoring, remote inspection, and real-time data visualization, while requiring minimal specialized training for operators.As you can see from this example, the drones themselves, while powerful, are just one part of an ecosystem that includes a delivery and charging platform, a comprehensive cloud-based platform, and software for processing the data collected into actionable, usable information.Its time to pay closer attention to whats possible with enterprise drones and drone platforms. These intelligent flying robots will do more than any other robotics in the next five years to transform whats possible in businesses and enterprises.