Original title: Diversified application scenarios, self-developed technology empowerment, and support policy guarantees...... (Introduction) Low-altitude economy "soars high" in the land of southern Guangdong (theme)
Liu Guangzhen is remotely controlling a drone to fertilize a rice field. All-media reporter Xu Yahui/photo
GAC flying car GOVE flew over Zhujiang New Town in Guangzhou. Courtesy of the unit
Wind tunnel flight experience. All-media reporter Lin Jingyu/photo
Liu Guangzhen is pouring fertilizer into the drone. All-media reporter Xu Yahui/photo
Huang Pengxing is conducting a drone inspection. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
The ground staff of Fengyi UAV Operation Center loads couriers for UAVs. All-media reporter Xu Yahui/photo
Tourists can take unmanned manned aircraft to experience low-altitude sightseeing routes, and complete the cross-city journey between Shenzhen and Zhuhai through eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) in only 20 minutes, drones shuttle between high-rise buildings to deliver express delivery and takeaway, and agricultural plant protection drones follow the designated path to sow seeds and spread fertilizer in the fields...... This scene full of science and technology is a true portrayal of the rapid development of Guangdong's low-altitude economy.
The low-altitude economy is a comprehensive economic form that relies on the low-altitude airspace, takes the low-altitude flight activities of various manned or unmanned aircraft as the traction, and radiates and drives the integrated development of related fields. At present, as one of the representatives of new quality productivity, the low-altitude economy is becoming a new track for all localities to compete for strength. In Guangdong, with the continuous iteration of technology, the application field of low-altitude economy has accelerated and is increasingly integrated into people's daily production and life. The reporter recently visited many places in Guangdong to explore how the low-altitude economic industry empowers the high-quality development of Guangdong.
Integration into production and life, application scenarios are becoming more and more diversified
Recently, GAC's "flying car" GOVE conducted a flight demonstration over the CBD of Zhujiang New Town, Guangzhou, which is the first time that GAC's "flying car" has been tested in a complex low-altitude environment in a public area of the city. Coincidentally, not long ago, EHang's EH216-S unmanned manned aircraft, the world's first "air taxi" that has obtained airworthiness certification and is independently developed in China, was put on the e-commerce platform for sale. Since the beginning of this year, a number of enterprises in Guangdong have rushed to launch low-altitude manned aircraft products and intensively conducted test flight demonstrations. It is foreseeable that in the near future, "flying" will become a new way to meet people's needs for better travel.
Low-altitude manned traffic is still in its infancy, but the application of low-altitude economy in agricultural plant protection, logistics and distribution, environmental monitoring and other aspects has long been integrated into people's daily production and life.
On April 16, the reporter came to a farmland in Zengcheng District, Guangzhou City, and looked at the 230 acres of rice fields planted by plant protection drones a month ago. "Now that spring planting is almost over, we are now busy using drones to fertilize the seedlings. Liu Guangzhen, a plant protection drone pilot, introduced that drone sowing not only greatly reduces the amount of labor and production costs, but also sows seeds very evenly, and the seedling emergence rate is particularly high.
At the scene, I saw Liu Guangzhen on the control platform of the mobile phone, after debugging the flight altitude, spacing, speed and other parameters of the drone in advance, a drone carrying nearly 100 catties of fertilizer took off from the ridge, according to the route set in advance, shuttled back and forth in the field, and the fertilizer sprayed was evenly spread in the rice field. Liu Guangzhen introduced that if according to the manual fertilization method, it takes 30 people to be busy all day to complete the fertilization operation of the 230 acres of farmland, and with the help of drones, it can be completed by only one person in one afternoon at the earliest. In addition, compared with artificial fertilization, the precise spraying technology of plant protection drones can also maximize the use rate of fertilizer and greatly reduce the cost of agricultural production.
Unlike Liu Guangzhen, in Zhanjiang, hundreds of kilometers away, Huang Pengxing, a drone pilot of Flying Imagination (Zhanjiang) Drone Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Flying Imagination"), uses drones to conduct forest inspections.
On April 19, the reporter came to the Flight Imagination Data Center and saw that the drone docked dozens of kilometers away at Donghai Island Airport in Zhanjiang City took off slowly under Huang Pengxing's remote control, and the on-site images and related data were transmitted back to the background in real time through 5G signals. Huang Pengxing said: "During the Qingming Festival, drones loaded with thermal imaging successfully reported 17 fires to the forest fire department within a radius of 10 kilometers centered on the airport, providing technical support for forest fire prevention. At the same time, while the UAV is cruising at high altitude, the loudspeaker mounted on it can also shout in real time, which is conducive to stopping various potentially dangerous behaviors in time.
Huang Pengxing was one of the earliest drone pilots in Zhanjiang. According to his recollection, in the past, in the woodland of Dongjian Town, Donghai Island, many comprehensive management personnel were required to drive back and forth to inspect. "It takes about two hours to complete a round of inspection, and if a fire is found, it has to be stopped and extinguished in time, which consumes a lot of manpower, material and financial resources. "With the upgrading of technology, pilots can now conduct high-altitude inspections of forest fire prevention points such as cemeteries and mountains through drones only by remote control in the background, shortening the inspection time from several hours to 10 minutes, and improving fire prevention and control capabilities more accurately and efficiently.
In addition to helping to improve production efficiency, the low-altitude economy has also brought many convenient experiences to people's lives. "Using drones to transport express delivery, a document sent from Longhua, Shenzhen to Bao'an Shiyan, only 12 yuan, in the past, the same city rush delivery cost about 50 yuan, and the efficiency is higher than before. Mr. Yuan from Shenzhen praised. His documents are distributed by the Fengyi UAV Operation Center in Shiyan, Bao'an District, Shenzhen, which is the largest logistics drone take-off and landing point in Shenzhen set up by Fengyi Technology Company, a subsidiary of SF Group, where many drones take off and land every day. On April 17, the reporter came to the take-off and landing point and saw that the captain was next to the computer in the dispatching and command center, issuing take-off and landing instructions, and monitoring various flight indicators in real time, while the ground crew shuttled back and forth to the take-off and landing site for cargo loading and unloading, scanning code records.
"The company currently has 7 UAV operation centers and many small take-off and landing points in Shenzhen, and has also opened cross-city logistics routes from Shenzhen to Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Dongguan and so on. Du Shenyun, the person in charge of Fengyi UAV Operation Center, introduced that users can place orders directly through the WeChat applet, and during the limited-time experience, the price of transportation in the same city is 12 yuan, and the price across cities is 40 yuan. Within the scope of the service, the promised delivery time is 2 hours to 4 hours, which is more than double the speed compared to traditional land transportation.
"Airdrop" takeaway is no longer an imaginary scene. At present, Meituan's three-kilometer delivery system at the end of the city has multiple transportation capacities such as riders, autonomous delivery vehicles, and delivery drones, forming a complete distribution system integrating ground and air. Luo Xikun, who is engaged in the flight test and route inspection of Meituan UAVs, told reporters that in the normalized trial operation routes that have been landed, the takeaway staff incarnates the role of the food pick-up, only needs to go to the store to pick up the food and pack the box, and send it to the airport thirty or fifty meters away. Compared with the existing average of 30-40 minutes to complete the delivery task, the drone can achieve the delivery task of 3 kilometers and 15 minutes at the end of the city. Riders can deliver 30 orders a day with electric vehicles, and 300 orders a day through human-machine cooperation, which greatly improves the delivery efficiency.
In terms of cultural tourism applications, flight enthusiasts can now experience flying against the wind without going to high altitudes. On April 16th, the reporter came to the Aifeile Wind Tunnel Flight Base located in Anhuahui, Baiyun District, Guangzhou City, and saw the instructors performing in the wind tunnel...... Since the start of trial operations in February this year, the wind tunnel base has welcomed many flying enthusiasts. According to reports, the wind tunnel is a kind of aerial suspension device, a collection of high-tech and thrilling, exciting entertainment projects, through artificial creation and control of airflow, in a specific space to "blow" visitors, so that players are not restrained, experience a process of free fall before skydiving. The person in charge of marketing of the base said that as a cultural tourism application scenario of the low-altitude economy, the base ushers in the peak flow of people on weekends and can receive hundreds of flying enthusiasts every day.
Adhere to independent research and development to provide technical support for "low-altitude and high-flying".
It is understood that at present, Guangdong's consumer-grade drones account for 90% of the country and more than 70% of the world. Behind the "high flying" of Guangdong's low-altitude economy, it is inseparable from the continuous innovation and breakthroughs in key technologies of many enterprises and R&D personnel.
As early as 2021, GAC Research Institute began to lay out the independent research and development of flying cars, and conquered a number of key core technologies in the three major fields of flying car safety, power, and lightweight, and in June 2023, the first flying car GOVE achieved its first global flight at GAC Science and Technology Day. As one of the important achievements of GAC Group's transformation and exploration into a technology-based enterprise, "flying car" has become another key R&D area of GAC Group after new energy and intelligent networking. Wu Jian, President of GAC Research Institute, revealed: "GOVE is based on product-level research in terms of styling, flight control, power system, and safety design. ”
"From the perspective of product development progress itself, GAC flying car emphasizes more pragmatism and practicality. Wu Jian introduced that GOVE is a pure electric vertical take-off and landing flying car, its unique land and air amphibious configuration makes it able to adapt to a variety of scenarios such as ground driving, air flight and air-ground docking, and has advanced technologies such as pure electric flight, distributed drive, vertical take-off and landing and air-ground combination, the current maximum take-off weight is 550kg, and the maximum range can reach 30km. GAC R&D Center is promoting its technology upgrade and project implementation with the goal of engineering verification, and has carried out more than 300 flight verifications so far. At the same time, it is also carrying out the research and development of a composite wing configuration flying car with a longer range and more passengers, which can meet the needs of 150km intercity travel in the Greater Bay Area.
In the field of logistics, in order to further improve the service timeliness, enterprises are competing to independently develop drone products and operation management systems according to the actual application needs of different scenarios.
Binhua Zhang is the Director of Operations Control of Fengyi Technology, mainly responsible for building and managing an integrated information management system serving the drone logistics business. In his opinion, as a low-altitude logistics and transportation UAV, the research and development needs to comprehensively consider a number of important factors, including the safety and redundancy design of the product, strong environmental adaptability, excellent loading and flight performance, and highly intelligent perception and decision-making capabilities. "In the field I am responsible for, the intelligent perception and decision-making ability of drones is particularly valued. Zhang Binhua introduced that intelligent perception decision-making does not only rely on the ability of a single drone, but involves the comprehensive performance of the entire system, including the input of all environmental perception devices, which work together from the drone itself to various ground infrastructure, cloud systems and machine terminals to achieve intelligent decision-making. "This system-level collaboration is key to ensuring that drones can operate safely and efficiently in complex and changing environments. ”
At present, Zhang Binhua's R&D team has made a series of breakthroughs in logistics drone operation technology, mainly including low-altitude logistics capacity platform, real-time flight management and high-density automated operation control and other key system functions. "But we also faced many challenges during the development process, especially how to ensure that different types of drones can fly safely and at scale in complex urban environments. Zhang Binhua further cited the example of 30 drone take-off and landing positions in Shiyan's drone operation center, which serve three different configurations of drones at the same time. During peak operations, the airspace over the operations center is unusually dense and complex. The system not only needs to ensure flight safety, but also to maximize the utilization and frequency of the site. In order to overcome this challenge, the team referred to the operational methods of the civil aviation sector, and on this basis, integrated innovative and automated dispatch capabilities. Through several coordination and tests with the ground operations team, the team finally developed the Fengyi Autonomous Dispatch System, which significantly improves the flight safety and operational efficiency of the UAV. Zhang Binhua said.
Independent research and development of UAVs suitable for practical application scenarios is inseparable from the "portrait" of UAVs. In Meituan's drone business department, Zhang Yanlun served as a hardware product manager, defining hardware products in the drone delivery process. "What are the functions of this drone? What is its size, flight speed, and load, and what sensors are it carrying? These need to be clearly depicted by us, and we can understand us as the 'sculptors' of the drone. Zhang Yanlun feels that this kind of "statue" is not simple, and its complexity mainly comes from the accurate grasp of "change". "The portrait of a drone is not static, the market, technology, and user needs will change, we need to look at the drone from a more global, forward-looking and diverse perspective, and design solutions according to the changes, not only to promote the actual landing of the product, but also to meet the new needs of the market. He said.
Zhang Yanlun said that the reason why Meituan chose to develop its own drone is precisely to cope with various changes in the actual scene of food delivery. On the one hand, some orders placed in special scenarios not only require drone delivery, but also need a set of air dispatching system to complete the route design and navigation safety of the aircraft, which means that a complete set of city-level UAV low-altitude logistics solutions need to be designed. On the other hand, most of Meituan's takeaway orders are scattered in office buildings, communities, shopping malls, and even small stores in the streets and alleys, and the route design of dense urban scenes and the stability of takeaway lunch boxes in the air are all factors that need to be taken into account when developing drones. And most of these off-the-shelf drone products on the market cannot be satisfied.
It is understood that since Meituan's drone delivered its first order in 2021, the scene coverage ability and experience of self-developed drones have continued to improve. The relevant person in charge of Meituan said: "Our self-developed new generation of drones are born for urban low-altitude logistics and distribution, and the designed capacity of 2.5 kg load and 5 km distribution radius are calculated after evaluating the surrounding takeaway orders, which can well meet the needs of most urban low-altitude logistics and distribution." ”
The momentum of development is strong, and it is urgent to improve the top-level laws and regulations
According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the scale of the mainland's low-altitude economy will exceed 500 billion yuan in 2023 and is expected to reach 2 trillion yuan in 2030. At the 2023 Central Economic Work Conference, the "low-altitude economy" was mentioned as a national strategic emerging industry. This year, the "low-altitude economy" was written into the government work report for the first time, and it is clear that this "new growth engine" is actively being created. Han Jun, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said that he would work with relevant departments and local governments to accelerate the implementation of low-altitude airspace reform and further revitalize low-altitude airspace resources.
Looking at the whole country, the development of low-altitude economy is in full swing, and Guangdong, as the pioneer of low-altitude economy, is constantly opening up the boundaries of its development. The reporter learned that this year, Guangdong clearly proposed to support Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Zhuhai to build a comprehensive demonstration zone for the general aviation industry and create a low-altitude economic and industrial highland in the Greater Bay Area. Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Zhanjiang and other places have successively introduced low-altitude economic industrial layout and support policies, competing for the layout of this strategic emerging industry in global competition.
"In general, the development of the mainland's low-altitude economy is still in its infancy, but the development momentum is strong, mainly showing three major trends: the blowout of low-altitude upstream and downstream industries, the acceleration of technological digital and intelligent transformation, and the diversification of application scenarios. Wang Guilin, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau, believes that there are still practical problems in the development of the national low-altitude economy, such as the leading departments of the pilot provinces, the lag in the construction of laws and regulations, the inconsistency of infrastructure standards, and the lack of financial support.
During the interview, many companies also told reporters that although the development of the low-altitude economy is unstoppable, it is still facing a series of development obstacles such as lack of safeguard measures, low market awareness and acceptance, imperfect relevant approval processes and imperfect safety supervision system.
Lin Dong, chairman of the Zhanjiang UAV Application Industry Association, believes that there are still many development shackles in the layout of the "city in the sky", the seizure of the new blue ocean of the industry, and the development of resources in the air. He said: "Taking Zhanjiang as an example, many functional departments do not have enough understanding of the low-altitude economy, which leads to many constraints on the approval of drone piloting. In addition, the relevant drone practitioners do not have enough understanding of laws and regulations, so that there have been many "black flights", which has potential safety hazards for promoting the development of the industry. Finally, the problem of talent training, the current cost of drone pilot certification is between 8,000 yuan and 12,000 yuan, the cost is relatively high, so that many potential talents sigh. ”
As for how to unleash the huge potential of low-altitude economic development and seize this trillion-level "new blue ocean"? The top-level guiding role in support and supervision is to establish and improve the low-altitude flight service support system; accelerate the construction of the national low-altitude economic legal and regulatory framework, introduce relevant laws and regulations in a timely manner, improve the top-level legal system, and ensure the low-altitude industrial environment; unify the standards of low-altitude infrastructure and guide local infrastructure construction; support the leading areas to lead the demonstration and form experience to be widely implemented; increase financial support and explore diversified financing models.
"Policies and regulations, airspace management, technological innovation, and infrastructure construction are the key elements for the development of a low-altitude economy. Wang Peng, an associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and a special researcher at Sun Yat-sen University, believes that in order to promote the high-quality development of the low-altitude economy, in addition to continuously improving several key elements, we should also strengthen the integration and development with other industries, and actively expand the application scenarios and market space of the low-altitude economy. At the same time, it is also necessary to pay attention to the cultivation and introduction of talents in the field of low-altitude economy, improve the quality and ability level of employees, and provide talent guarantee for the development of low-altitude economy.
(Source: Southern Labor Daily Author: All-media reporter Xu Yahui, Wang Yan, Lin Tingyu, Yu Jianye, correspondent Su Liyan, Huang Zhiqing)
Editor-in-charge: Huang Yu
Second trial: Liu Min