PHOENIX DRONE SERVICES, operating from a business park on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, is typical of the small firms that have sprung up in recent years to pursue the commercial opportunities around drones. Its founders, Mark Yori and Brian Deatherage, started off by building radio-controlled planes. To stream live video, they modified a baby monitor and attached its camera to a fixed-wing drone. These were the days of "crash, smash, rebuild and try again", Mr Deatherage recalls. Then in 2011 they used a drone-mounted smartphone to take some pictures, for which they were paid $200. "That's a business," Mr Yori concluded, and their company was born, one of the first permitted to operate drones commercially under a "section 333 exemption" granted by the Federal Aviation Administration.
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