Drone Manufacturing: From Radioplane to ABB Robot Cells

Drone manufacturing has moved from hobby benches to factories that plan their output in thousands of units a year, and a few that talk in far bigger numbers. This post follows that path from Reginald Denny's model planes and the Radioplane factory of the 1940s, through the DIY quadcopter scene and DJI's Phantom, to the plants opened or planned this year in Hungary, California and Ukraine. It looks at which jobs on a drone line suit robots and how ABB robots such as the IRB 930 SCARA, YuMi and the IRB 360 FlexPicker could fit, then at what still holds back drone factories outside China.

A DJI Phantom 3 Standard quadcopter in flight, 2016. Photo: Clemenspool / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From model planes to the first drone assembly lines

The first mass-produced drones grew out of a hobby. The Hollywood actor Reginald Denny opened a model plane shop on Hollywood Boulevard in 1934. It closed two years later, but in 1935 he and Nelson Paul Whittier set up Reginald Denny Industries. Their Radioplane One, or RP-1, was essentially a greatly enlarged model airplane, and its 1938 demonstration at Dale Dry Lake ended in a crash when the radio failed. The company carried on as Radioplane, and its OQ-2 target drone, built at a plant at Van Nuys Airport near Los Angeles, became the first mass-produced unmanned aircraft in the United States, with about 15,000 made.

A Radioplane OQ-2, the first American mass-produced drone, at the Yanks Air Museum in Chino, California. Photo: Alan Wilson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The OQ-2 and its successors were put together by assemblers on factory lines. The Army photographer David Conover visited the Radioplane plant and took pictures of a young assembler named Norma Jeane Dougherty, who later became Marilyn Monroe, and the Army weekly Yank printed them in June 1945. More than 9,400 of the follow-on OQ-3 were produced during the war, which made it the most widely used target drone in US service at the time. Northrop bought the company in 1952, and its postwar Shelduck target drone reached about 60,000 units in a production run that lasted into the 1980s.

Norma Jeane Dougherty, later Marilyn Monroe, holding a propeller in David Conover's Army photos, printed by Yank in June 1945. Photo: U.S. Army / David Conover via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Small drones went through a hobby stage again decades later. Chris Anderson started the DIY Drones online community for aerial vehicle fans, and in 2009 he and Jordi Muñoz, who met there, founded 3D Robotics. Builders soldered flight controllers, motors and speed controllers onto homemade frames. Mass production came from Shenzhen. DJI, founded there in 2006 by Frank Wang, released its first Phantom in 2013 as a fully assembled drone priced at $629. By June 2024 DJI held over 90% of the world consumer drone market, and its Shenzhen factories run automated assembly lines, many of whose parts DJI builds in house.

A home built quadcopter with its battery, wiring and motors in plain view. Photo: SKsiddhartthan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

New drone factories in Hungary, California and Ukraine

This year the push is to build drones closer to the customers. On 17 September 2026 ABZ Innovation opened a €7 million factory extension in Szentendre, Hungary, which it calls one of the largest dedicated civilian drone factories in Europe. The 1,060 square metre plant is rated for 2,000 heavy agricultural and industrial drones a year on one shift and 3,500 on two, with 40 to 45 people at full capacity. ABZ builds spraying, spreading, cleaning and cargo drones, sold in more than 40 countries. Its chief executive Károly Ludvigh told Reuters that before this "there was almost no existing capacity to manufacture these kinds of drones" in Europe.

An agricultural drone spraying a paddy field, the kind of work ABZ's L-Series drones are built for. Photo: Shreesha Sharma / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The numbers are bigger in the United States and Ukraine. In April 2026 Skydio, whose four factories are in Hayward, California, announced SkyForge, a $3.5 billion five-year plan with a much larger new plant and more than 2,000 jobs. Fortune reported on 17 September that Ukraine's General Cherry has capacity for about 100,000 drones a month, spread across a distributed network of sites. Parts are getting attention as well. On 30 June the US Army's Tobyhanna depot in Pennsylvania started a brushless motor line aimed at 480,000 motors a year, and it is installing five-axis robots from Q5D Technologies to automate wire harness assembly.

A Skydio X2D drone inspects a KC-10 aircraft at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, November 2022. Photo: U.S. Air Force / Mauricio Campino via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB has not announced a drone factory project, so what follows is a possibility. A drone is mostly electronics, motors, wiring and a light frame, and ABB already sells robots for each of those jobs in other industries. The IRB 930 SCARA, launched in 2023 for electronics and battery work, can press down with up to 250 N for screwdriving and repeats positions to 0.01 mm. The dual-arm YuMi IRB 14000 handles small parts next to people, and ABB has used it with a smart screwdriver inside its own drives business. An IRB 360 FlexPicker could pick motors, propellers and screws into kits. Our posts on screwdriving robots and PCB assembly cover those cells.

An engineer with an ABB IRB 930 SCARA robot, launched in 2023 for electronics and battery assembly. Photo: ABB

What comes next for drone manufacturing

Factories will go after the slow, fiddly jobs first. Wire harnesses are one, and Tobyhanna's Q5D cells are an early example. Motor winding, soldering, gluing and final flight testing are others. Frames are changing too: Addcomposites says its large-format printing system turns standard industrial arms, including ABB, KUKA or Fanuc robots, into printers for drone airframes made from polymer granulate, with design changes in minutes. Fortune described Ukrainian makers working on procurement cycles of three months instead of three years, and a line like that needs robots that can be reprogrammed quickly. Such cells are usually planned and checked in RobotStudio before they are built.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items at high speed. Photo: ABB

For people at home and on farms, more local production could change what is on sale. Agricultural drones like ABZ's are already bought by farmers, and the company says its spraying models cut water use by up to 90% and chemical use by up to 50%. ABZ also plans to start non-military drone production in the United States during 2027, a move DroneXL links to US rules on foreign-made drones. Consumer camera drones are still dominated by DJI, so the choice for a hobby flyer or a small business will depend on whether newer makers in Europe and the US can get close to its prices.

A DJI Phantom 3 Advanced camera drone, the kind of consumer model newer makers have to compete with. Photo: Jacek Halicki / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Money is the first problem. DJI held over 90% of the consumer market in 2024, and ABZ lost about 1 billion forint in 2025 while it grew, so young makers have little cash to spend on automation. Parts come next: the Army's motor line in Pennsylvania was set up to cut reliance on China for drone motors. Designs also change quickly, which makes a fixed special machine a poor buy, and reprogrammable SCARAs and cobots suit that better. The new plants in Szentendre, Hayward and elsewhere will also need technicians who can build drones and keep robot cells running.

ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000, the robot ABB used for its own screwdriving cell, here working beside a lab technician. Photo: ABB

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