The domestic drone industry has been favored by capital this year

Absrtact: In recent years, UAV has attracted a lot of attention and discussion. The Giants favor the drone, Amazon launched the Prime Air UAV Logistics plan, has entered the 9th generation of product research and development; The domestic pole fly is also advancing with Shun Fung's UAV logistics project

In recent years, the UAV has attracted a lot of attention and discussion. The Giants favor the drone, Amazon launched the Prime Air UAV Logistics plan, has entered the 9th generation of product research and development, the domestic flying is also promoting and Shun Fung's UAV logistics project; Google buys drone company Titan Aerospace, Recently, a secret research and development of two years of unmanned aircraft project Wing;facebook 20 million U.S. dollars to buy British drone company Ascenta, Disneyland also introduced drones. With the development of technology, mature, consumer-grade civilian UAV (multi-rotor aircraft), is also a small number of enthusiasts "toys" into mass consumer goods, the recent DJI released a 3399-dollar integrated small multi-rotor aircraft inspire 1,gopro also want to do unmanned aircraft recently, There are entrepreneurs on the platform to launch a camera can be Zano unmanned aircraft.

We previously reported on the domestic drone team EHang, recently launched a ghost on Indiegogo, the lowest support price of 599 U.S. dollars, has raised 510,000 U.S. dollars. EHang told 36 Krypton, which includes more than 100,000 dollars of support from overseas dealers, supported by nearly 700 consumers. In addition, Apple co-founder Steve Woznia, Misfit founder Sonny Vu, Zepp Jason Fass for the Ghost platform, but also for the public to raise a lot of points.

Compared with the first generation of products, this generation of products added a new way of handling, EHang called Avatar Body Sense Control: the use of the mobile phone's gravity sensor, ghost implementation of the body, with the picture-pass glasses, you can simply use the hands of the aircraft to achieve the operation of the control; in no GPS mode, The user can use the handset to control the ghost to carry on the flight indoors. EHang told 36 Krypton, inside the technical difficulties are mainly the need for mobile phone and aircraft coordination and communication response speed has a very high demand, to solve this problem, in order to reduce user learning costs. Aircraft control is relatively fine, the use of gravity control will generally cause delays. EHang said, "because the radio management is not allowed abroad, they put the previous 433MHz communication band to the 2.4Ghz module, the delay is very low." However, Avatar mode is too fast to be potentially dangerous, they also limit the speed, the user must learn from the 5km/h and start to upgrade, the future will give users gradually open speed permissions.

At the same time, the new product also added to follow the function, start the follow button, Ghost aircraft will lock the user's GPS location, when the two vertical distance of 3 meters when the aircraft will follow the user. Users can also choose to follow the "right", the height can be adjusted according to user needs.

There are DJI, outside the faction, facing fierce competition ehang has been trying to build a platform, on the one hand, open the SDK, on the one hand, the concept of the UAV social network.

Developers can develop a Third-party flight program for Ghost, without the knowledge of flight control, can be used to make countless kinds of possibilities. EHang's co-founder, Xiang Yifang, has cited several examples of a group of senior students at the University of Berkeley who are combining ghost with Oculus Rift, and the voice-activated app developed by the US LinkedIn engineer needs only to say instructions such as "Take Off", The plane took off. However, given that DJI, which sold more than 800 million yuan last year, also announced last month that opening Sdk,ehang will still face pressure.

After launching the SDK, EHang said, "Ghost drones can be networked, and a computer can control nearly 10 unmanned aircraft formations flying in the air, making different array changes." Next year, the mobile app side is expected to join the social module between users and users to share aerial video to social networking modules. "Given that the rumored millet drones are likely to be sold at a lower price, EHang may also face challenges in the future with a drone-borne social network."

But EHang has some understanding of drones and the industry. In EHang's view, the popularity and outbreak of UAVs depends on two factors: ease of operation and price, for ordinary consumers still have a certain threshold price, the expected price drop will have to wait for some time. EHang has been easy to operate to reduce the user's learning threshold. In the future, the UAV itself is bound to become more and more intelligent, not just a flight machine or toys, but become a network of things in the air portal, in the future you can see the UAV automatically avoid obstacles to delivery, you can see more wearable equipment and VR equipment combined.

This year, the domestic unmanned aircraft industry has been favored by the capital, a number of unmanned aircraft companies to obtain financing, can be said to really verify the Internet "to B, to C, to VC" three models. The huge influx of capital into the field is the backdrop to the revival of smart hardware and the rise of the market for aerial rackets. However, in the case of unmanned aerial vehicles will undoubtedly be a new industry rising 300 meters high altitude, can do logistics, can provide WiFi hotspot services, can be aerial photo mapping ... The cost of the machine is decreasing, the cost of people is rising, when these two cost lines converge, it will become the turning point of the UAV. Even without the market share and the business model, the economic significance of the drone is already evident. EHang in 6 months from a start-up of four or five people to the Silicon Valley, Guangzhou, Beijing, the group of nearly hundred people, the valuation has doubled 24 times times, but also the big environment.

Even so, no one wants to really "explode", there are many problems to face. The first is policy and regulation, which have the right to speak on this issue, and are likely to gain a subversive advantage. Recently, NASA has established a partnership with the unmanned aerial Vehicle System application development platform start-up, Airware, to develop an unmanned air traffic control system for 4 years. Believe that the next two years, the domestic very likely to introduce stringent standards, reshuffle the entire industry of drones.