I’ve also been tinkering with various scanners and cameras in recent years, partly in connection with the forestry and agriculture sectors, so it’s interesting to hear your thoughts from that side!
The obstacle to growth at the moment seems to be that, for example, for a forest or agricultural hectare, the costs of drone measurement or other on-site operations are too high compared to the benefits gained. For example, the monitoring and measurement of Finnish forests are largely based on large-scale laser scanning from airplanes (by the way, Trimble Inc. is partly involved in this, although Hexagon AB is even more so), as well as partly on the interpretation of satellite imagery. In these, automation and modeling can be utilized for large areas at once.
Having followed closely, especially in the forestry sector, experiments are actively carried out by industry organizations and large companies, but in agriculture, the experimentation with new technologies is left to individual enthusiastic farmers and researchers.
Trimble Forestry, by the way, seems to have been practically born entirely through acquisitions, consisting mainly of Fifth Element (2015), Savcor (2017), and Silvadata (also 2017) acquired from Finland.
Earlier I mentioned the idea of Precision Agriculture, and after that, I came across a pretty good and concise Nasdaq article from last autumn: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-is-precision-farming-and-who-are-the-players-to-watch-2020-10-07
Trimble, John Deere, and AGCO are also mentioned there as strong players, but new names also caught my eye for further study, such as Raven Industries.