Queensland leading the way in the drone industry

It also has the second highest number of registered drones and operator accreditations in the country at 7956 and 5282 respectively.

The agriculture industry has certainly played a big part in the adoption of the technology, and has benefitted in many ways over the last decade, but the real gains are yet to come, with more use cases and tech just around the corner.

East Coast Drones at Emerald is one business at the forefront, finding its niche in the cattle mustering and automation markets after just a year in business.

Owner James Warren works on drone sales and repairs, as well as aerial mouse baiting and applying liquid and granular fertilisers and herbicides, but having previously worked on a cattle station near Ebor in northern NSW, he knows which direction he wants to head in.

"There's a niche market starting with rotational grazing and moving cattle with them," Mr Warren said.

"We've got a few companies and properties on board starting to use them and using them quite successfully.

"When you start weighing up the cost of repairing suspension on buggies - getting them stuck here and there and everywhere, it is quite cheap to go buy a couple of grand's worth of drones and throw them up in the air."

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However, mustering over thousands of square kilometres can be difficult and comes with compliance issues.

"A big thing in my business at the moment is mustering and the law hasn't quite caught up yet," Mr Warren said.

"It's getting worse for the drone market. In many cases, farmers aren't allowed to be mustering cattle with them at the moment because you can't go beyond line of sight. It's one of those things that, as a business, you have to sit there and weigh up."

Currently, to fly beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS), farmers must apply for an approval.

In September last year, CASA CEO Pip Spence outlined work on a regulatory roadmap to give the users direction and understanding of likely regulatory requirements.

"Historically, aviation regulation has been prescriptive... Today we understand the need to have outcome-based regulations and an approach that recognises that regulators don't have all the answers," Ms Spence said.

Ms Spence said how the industry regulated safety in the world of advanced air mobility was still evolving and would mature over time.

"Remote drone monitoring of cattle properties for animal welfare and other requirements is happening, delivering results and, importantly for me, being done safely within the remotely piloted aircraft regulations," she said.

Ms Spence said to make this possible, CASA had provided a number of approvals to operate BVLOS, which were assessed using the Specific Operation Risk Assessment approach.

As someone who is tapped into the drone zeitgeist, Mr Warren said automation would develop dramatically over the next three to five years. As part of this, he has been working with a university on wireless charging.

"Every two hours, our drone would go and take a picture of a water trough kilometres away and come back and charge itself off a solar panel. They're a very niche thing and no big companies do them, but you can do it yourself with homemade drone kits. We do a couple just for water monitoring."

Mr Warren also sees drones working in a more physical manner.

"Then you start to look at virtual fencing, where that drone can then be the physical object going out there and push that cow back in. That's where they'll head in the next couple of years."

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