In Zhangjiang Shengda Tiandi Yuanchuang Valley, a glass curtain wall outside the office on the 10th floor of Shanghai Shiwei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has become a testing ground for the R&D team: one drone after another is equipped with a self-developed flight control system, aiming at the outer wall with arc, constantly repeating tests such as route design, automatic flight, and data capture, so as to accelerate the application scenarios of automatic inspection.
At present, the "low-altitude economy" is still hot, and drones, eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) and other aircraft are the most important carriers of the entire low-altitude economy in the future. As an important participant in the low-altitude economy, Shanghai Lion Tail Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on the research and development of advanced avionics flight control technology and provides solutions for fully automatic flight.
R&D of core technologies
Shi Wei, the founder of Shiwei Intelligence, graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a major in mechanical engineering, and worked in the Chinese headquarters of a well-known foreign-funded aircraft research and development company. In 2015, he decided to start his own business and led the Lion Tail Intelligent team to invest in the research and development of UAV flight control system.
In terms of flight control system, the core technology of low-altitude aircraft is to improve the ability of "eyes, cerebellum and brain": in terms of environmental perception, positioning and obstacle avoidance, improve the safety of the aircraft and play the role of "eyes"; In terms of aircraft flight stability and safety, it is necessary to optimize vertical take-off and landing technology, autonomous take-off and landing control system, and enhance the ability of "cerebellum"; In the process of flight, solve technical problems such as aircraft independent decision-making and path planning, and develop "brain" intelligence.
For the field of urban industrial UAVs, one of the key technologies of Lion Tail Intelligence - INSKY control system SVO, is equivalent to equipping UAVs with self-developed "eyes, cerebellum, and brain": as long as the specified destination is entered, autonomous operation can be realized, automatic take-off, landing and cruise can be supported, with automatic ground and air collision avoidance functions, and automatic failure protection, without the need for professional pilots to operate.
The scene is accelerated
Technological breakthroughs in autonomous flight have opened up a larger space for commercial applications of drones.
"We are accelerating the automation upgrade of industrial inspection scenarios through industrial drones, and one of the main landing scenarios is the automatic inspection of glass curtain walls." Du Jiahao, partner of Lion Tail Intelligence, told reporters that the integration of multiple technologies such as intelligent networking, route planning and autonomous perception and obstacle avoidance allows drones to maximize their application capabilities in complex scenarios and form a set of automated urban flight patrol solutions.
In a megacity like Shanghai, there are tens of thousands of high-rise buildings with glass curtain walls, and it is difficult to find some blind spots and blind spots only by manual daily inspections. The intelligent solution developed by Lion Tail Intelligence can not only automatically plan the UAV inspection route, but also send the captured video back to the data service center in real time for splicing, modeling and other operations, so as to complete the display of high-fidelity real-life models. In this way, the staff can intuitively see the height of the building, the number of floors, the condition of each curtain wall, and the construction information of each floor through the 3D map in the background.
At present, there are many daily work scenarios in China that stay in the manual inspection stage, such as river management around the city, monitoring of environmental pollution, highway-related traffic law enforcement, monitoring of construction sites and inspection of urban glass curtain wall buildings, etc., as well as in remote areas, such as industrial scenarios represented by energy such as oil pipelines, natural gas pipelines, offshore drilling platforms, and power lines.
Du Jiahao revealed that due to the continuous development of UAV-related flight control, image transmission, data transmission and other technologies, superimposed over-the-horizon control, monitoring, intelligent networking, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things and other technologies, industrial UAVs have been the first to be applied in the field of inspection and exploration and security, and more inspection scenarios will be accelerated in the future to continue to improve the efficiency of industrial inspection.
Race for the low-altitude economy
Across the road from the park where Shiwei Intelligence is located, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute is located. "The take-off of 'big planes' has driven 'small planes' such as drones to accelerate towards marketization." In Du Jiahao's view, the domestic low-altitude economy is in a period of opportunity for change and strategic development.
In the field of manned aircraft, Lion Tail has recently launched the urban four-dimensional automatic flight control system, which integrates avionics flight control and intelligent perception technology to provide airworthiness automatic flight control systems for various aviation aircraft, and also lays the foundation for the innovation of future air vehicles.
Industry experts believe that the new low-altitude aircraft equipment will be high-end, intelligent and green, and the key core technologies of aviation equipment such as UAVs are expected to accelerate breakthroughs, and the technical level will turn to international leadership. For different application needs, the continuous improvement of product competitiveness and market adaptability will become the key for enterprises to compete in the low-altitude economy.
From urban inspection to manned aircraft, the story of Liontail Intelligence's autonomous flight technology to change the air traffic pattern and innovate people's travel methods continues, and in the future, it will strive to promote the close connection between cities and people, cities and buildings, and cities and cities, and accelerate the development and innovation of low-altitude economy.