James Bond and the costly U-2s were needed to locate military targets in the Cold War. Later, UAVs were introduced for reconnaissance operations. Although "they save lives", these UAVs were still too expensive and inaccessible to civilians. As of 2012, USAF deployed about 7500 UAVs. Starting in the 1990's, research programs were introduced in the robotics community to develop and miniaturize UAV technology for civilian use. Based on this work, a final-year project was done in 2005 at HKUST, aiming to develop a helicopter flight controller. Later, Frank Wang went on to found a UAV company by the name of DJI and introduced the Phantom family, a series of ready-to-fly UAVs equipped with gimbal-stabilized cameras. Combining consumer-level price and good user experience, the Phantom quickly became a popular device among hobbyists, filmmakers, and consumers. A new market for easy-to-fly aerial robotics that anyone could use emerged. Today the Phantoms are widely utilized in aerial photography/filmmaking, agriculture, sports, and infrastructure inspection and more. The drone market in 2015 is expected to break the one million unit benchmark.
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