Commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Growing Fast Communication Charging Technology to Be Breakthrough

In the development trend of UAV including airspace, land and water, the development of UAV in airspace is the most rapid and mature driven by the transformation of emerging electronic technology and traditional remote control model industry. UAV technology involves machinery, communications, flight control, aerospace and other cross-cutting fields. Its market application has expanded to smart cities, geographic exploration, safety monitoring, logistics and transportation, advanced agriculture, etc. It has not only export potential in products, but also industrial benefits in application.
Goldman Sachs research predicts that the global UAV market will probably exceed $100 billion from 2016 to 2020, due to the growing demand for market applications.
_. Rapid growth of commercial opportunities in North America remains the main market
In early 2019, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a forecast for aviation development in the next 20 years. It mentioned that in 2018 alone, the number of commercial UAVs registered in FAA had exceeded 175,000, increasing the total number of registered commercial UAVs in the United States by more than 170% and more than 277,000.
FAA originally predicted in 2018 that about 452,000 commercial UAVs would be put into use in the United States by 2022, but many large enterprises such as Amazon, Google, Walmart and so on have announced that they will put delivery UAVs into use. According to the current growth rate, it is not necessary to wait until 2022, and the target will be reached by the beginning of 2020 at the latest.
The FAA therefore believes that the commercial UAV market will double in the next five years to 835,000 by 2023. The share of the UAV market, which costs less than $10,000, will also delet from 95% to 85%. It shows that commercial UAVs are expected to get rid of the low-cost competitive pressure of consumer UAVs due to the improvement of performance and application value.
In fact, since the implementation of FAA's UAV real-name registration system in December 2015, there are more than 900,000 registered aircraft owners in the United States until September 2018. It is estimated that there are about 1.25 million amateur UAVs in use in the United States. It is expected that by 2023, the number of amateur UAVs will grow to 1.4 million, which is obviously less than that of commercial UAVs. In addition, the growth rate of registration in 2018 has been higher than that in 2016 and 2017. The slowdown reflects the slowdown in the growth of the consumer UAV market.
Another important market for commercial UAVs, China, is also growing very fast. According to the Research Report on the Market Prospects of China's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Industry in 2019, the domestic civil unmanned aerial vehicle market will surpass the Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle market, and the domestic civil unmanned aerial vehicle market is expected to exceed 20 billion yuan by 2019. But the U.S. market is still the most important UAV market, accounting for about 65% of the global market; China ranks second, at 5%, followed by Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, at 4%, and France at less than 3%.
_Commercial UAVs not only grow rapidly in products, but also in revenue from application services. According to Tractica's latest forecast, global UAV service revenue will grow from $337.6 million in 2017 to $22.7 billion in 2026, driving leading industries in the UAV service market, including the film and media industries, the public utilities, energy and infrastructure sectors, and agriculture.
_Communication and Charging Technology Still to Be Breakthroughed
However, there are still many technical bottlenecks for commercial UAVs to break through in order to expand more application services. Usually UAV is controlled by Wi-Fi remote control, and its endurance is too short. It has only 20-30 minutes of power, which limits the application of UAV.
In order to break through the limitation of application and develop more and more UAVs, the dual-link communication scheme with Wi-Fi has been developed for 4G networks. Although the communication quality of 4G signals in different regions will be challenged by instability, which will lead to difficulties in image transmission and other applications, as long as the balance between transmission delay and image quality can be achieved, the future commercial application is still imminent.
_The key to the sustainability of UAV is power. How to make the UAV automatically return to the ground station to charge after the mission is carried out and how to make the outdoor charging station overcome the weather problem has also become a problem that many R&D personnel are trying to solve, such as using Real Time Kinematic (RTK), high precision positioning and infrared guidance, and setting up self-charging in the top floor. The power station can make the UAV land between stations and charge quickly, without the need to updat batteries by manpower, effectively prolong the UAV duty time.
_Soft and Hard Integration Development of Vertical Application is the Focus
If we can overcome the problems of communication module, automation and charging system, and strive to shorten the distance between technology and application, the more potential application value of UAV will be, replacing dangerous, time-consuming and laborious work.
_UAV can also carry dual-lens, with the function of large-scale detection and detailed focusing. For example, it can master water information in reservoir inspection and traffic flow analysis at important intersections to prevent traffic accidents. If hardware and software manufacturers can work together to provide all-round vertical application solutions for UAVs and customize them according to the needs of different fields, they will be able to seize the unlimited potential market and business opportunities for UAVs.