Well I did some hands on flying for a student last at a certain aviation University where they are not allowed to fly at the airfield they are based on. That is in itself madness.
I was surprised at just how far behind their projects were.
What the lad was trying to achive was a task set every year that I thought was interesting, in a project I am involved in that started from scratch last January we have replicated and gone past what he was trying to show.
OpenPilot - Open Source UAV Platform
But then all these that are lead by scientists tend to lean towards functionality thats not needed in real world tasks.
CAP 722 is changing in April, so perhaps there will be some better guidance on build standards for people like me that are building sUAS for general consumption
UK CAA to update CAP 722, April 2011 | sUAS News but basically below 20kg they are not going to look much more than a model aircraft.
You can do some pretty cool things with model planes these days.
Brayfield House Octo - Photosynth
Thats from last year and its not the images coming together thats interesting, its the point cloud you can make. There are now ways of geo referencing them and hey presto a 3D model made from standard photos.
Not Lidar standard yet...
I think it won't be the aviation side of universities that get excited about UAS, it will be the geographers.