There’s still a lot of controversy about the safety of unmanned drones buzzing about over our heads, but the idea is getting more popular by the day. A case in point is GE Ventures, which has just announced its plan to collaborate with the San Francisco-based startup Airware, which builds hardware, software and services for commercial drones.

GE Ventures says drones are basically “flying sensors”, and has pumped an undisclosed amount of cash into the startup with a view to putting its drones to work in the oil and gas, transportation, power and wind industries.

Airware has already raised some $40 million in funding, and will now get the benefit of GE’s expertise, not to mention access to any number of its industrial clients. In addition, GE is planning work closely with Airware to adapt its drone operating system for specific industrial use cases.

Airware’s come a long way since it launched in 2011. It’s main product is an operating system that lets drone users customize their flying machines for various commercial tasks, be it industrial inspections or tracking poachers. But Airware admits there’s still plenty of work to be done, as its platform isn’t nearly flexible enough for every use case.

The reason is drones require different capabilities to fulfill different tasks – for example a helicopter-like drone might be ideal for inspecting something like wind turbines, but checking oil pipelines requires a faster, fixed-wing design – and each design needs its own customized software. GE plans to help Airware refine its OS for use cases such as these.

GE’s expertise will come in handy in other areas too. For example, GE has extremely advanced image processing and sensory technology at its disposal – this could be integrated with Airware’s drones to create vastly superior flying machines to what they currently have.

Airware says its first product is expected to be launched early next year, and with GE now on board, the sky really is the limit.

photo credit: Ars Electronica via photopin cc