In recent years, the application of UAV has been expanded, from the traditional personal entertainment, film and television aerial photography, agriculture and forestry plant protection and other fields to the emerging logistics express, police patrols, medical care and other fields.
On September 10th-September 14th, 2008 Global UAV Conference held in Chengdu. And logistics distribution may be a promising application scenario in the UAV industry.
It should be noted that aviation safety is the foundation of industry development. UAV distribution can effectively reduce labor risks and transportation costs in remote areas with complex terrain, but is the safety cost of "last kilometer" distribution too high? How to effectively control security risks and other issues are still controversial.
The domestic market reached 12 billion last year.
"China's drone development is based on market demand, unlike traditional aviation which is government-led. This is not exactly the same as abroad, so you will find that the drone industry is growing very fast in China. " Jang said almost all of the groundbreaking applications in drones have occurred in China in an interview with the Daily Economic News.
"Over the past two or three years, we have faced a lot of personal consumption problems with drones, and in the next few years, we feel that logistics distribution and operational flight will rise rapidly, and we will focus more on this aspect of the regulatory environment and supporting policies. Then it could be a large, long-range drone, eventually a drone, with man-machine fusion. " Li Ning told the Daily Economic News that the development of medium-and short-range operational drones will be the next trend and that the next step may be to set up special routes and channels for drones.
Zhang Xinghao also told the reporter that domestic drones are now mainly in low-altitude airspace isolation flights, and logistics distribution may be the first to enter the non-isolated airspace of unmanned aerial vehicles commercial field.
Cost cannot be 30% higher than ground transportation
Reducing labor costs is also the driving force to promote the development of logistics distribution UAV.
However, the future of UAV logistics delivery is actually a competition with ground transportation. "The cost of UAV distribution should not be higher than that of 30% of the ground transportation, and the time saved should be more than 4 hours. In this case, there may be a scenario where it can be applied."
With the development of UAV distribution from remote areas to plain areas and even cities, the outside world also pays more attention to the cost and security of the "last kilometer" transportation.
Liu Hao, deputy director of the National Air Traffic Control Regulations and Standards Research Center, told the reporter that because of the dense population and the high safety cost of the "last kilometer", it may be more suitable for pilot applications of unmanned aerial vehicle logistics in special terrain areas, such as the sea and Yun gui chuan areas.
Civil Aviation Authority: "Releasing and Management Combination"
The Unmanned aerial vehicle Logistics is still imperfect. "It's too early to have universal drone regulations, and no conditions are in place." Li said. “On the contrary, we may have some breakthroughs in some special scenarios for particular applications to accumulate data. " He also said the level of pilots needed to be adjusted, and there was a strong need for regulators to set communications standards.
"At present, the Civil Aviation Authority's supervision of UAVs is mainly based on the combination of releasing and management. Under the condition of ensuring safety, the CAA has approved a number of UAV pilot projects in the past two years. Our UAVs are the first to fly first in the world," he said. The Civil Aviation Authority is actively encouraging first-in-test approaches, and many of the UAV standards are still being developed. " Li Ning said that there are many commercial pilot projects at present, such as those in Nankang, Ganzhou, and the pilot in the northwest of JingDong. There may also be a lot of pilot work for commercial operations in succession.
