Looking forward, looking back, or: lessons learned

Today, drones have become mainstream. The drone boom is at it´s peak, or maybe beyond.

More than ten years ago, on the way into our summer holidays in bavaria, we stopped at a gasoline station. My dad bought me an issue oft he P.M. magazine, featuring an article on small unmanned airplanes. I still remember that day like yesterday. I was hooked.

I simply knew MAVs, as outlined in that article, were possible. I imagined the endless possibilities for a small, portable „eye in the sky“. In the coming years, i was daydreaming of drones literally for days on end. The more technology evolved, the more my imagination grew. I read DARPA´s „Towards a new dimension in flight“ on my dad´s old mac. This is one oft he first „scientific“ papers i ever printed out (in color!), and one oft he first papers i read. I knew this technology would shape the future. It was the future.

Yet, the technology i imagined was vastly different from what it turned out to be. I was inspired by the agility of nature, fooled by the promises of modern bionics (or should i say biomimicry?). I expected drones to have their final breakthrough only when artificial muscle became cheap and reliable. Eletro-chemical (or purely electrical) muscle like in Michelson´s entomopter  The MFI (micromechanical flying insect)-project became my holy grail. But again, i was fooled. Different technologies became standard, quadrocopters became the kick-starters of civil unmanned flight innovation. Different terms were coined. Ten years later, it is not MAVs, UAVs or MFIs. It is drones.

  But even more than this, i was passive. I dreamed.

I had not yet learned how to educate myself. Different people my age started (and, very recently, sold) companies which became world leaders in UAV innovation.

 It does not count what you think or imagine. Thoughts do not change the world.

Only actions do.

Lesson learned.