Intelligent UAV development path

Tencent technology Mei Tianyi July 3 reported

Last year, Amazon released a big satellite called PrimeAir, to deliver the courier to the user's home through drones. Immediately after the UPS is also to be outdone announced the start of pilot UAV delivery project.

This allows only the usual infiltration in aerial photography, reconnaissance and other special scenes of small drone into the public field of vision. Whether it is price or manipulation, for the average person, the drones are beginning to become less distant.

In addition to Amazon and UPS, domestic enterprises, including SF, also explored the commercial use of UAVs. Some start-up team is more aimed at this area of ​​the air.

However, according to Tencent Technology, intelligent UAVs are still a few years away from being large-scale into the logistics industry. At present, this hot new hardware product may be used in aerial photography business or the major media will be the first batch of intelligent UAVs user.

Intelligent UAV more and more people

In the drone space, DJI and AR Drone are big names. These two strange names may not be able to attract your attention, but the hit variety show "Where's the Dad" in the aerial camera, it is by the Shenzhen Xinjiang company PHANTOM completed.

However, this UAV still needs more professional operation and nearly ten thousand yuan price, but with the advent of intelligent hardware boom, the market has poured into a group of spoilers.

Ghost team from Guangzhou billion Airways recently completed crowdfunding, they go with the same "people first" line, the plastic body of the four-rotor UAV is their first product launch, plastic means lower costs and more Light body, while the price of 2,000 yuan Ghost UAV caused great concern.

Xiong Yifang, founder of Billion Air jointly accepted an exclusive interview with Tencent Technology and said that their product design is indeed launched around these words because the most prominent feature of the Ghost UAV is that you can use your smart phone to control the UAV. You can actually throw away that complicated and cumbersome manipulator.

"Where do you want to go?" This is Tencent's greatest experience after experiencing the Ghost quadrotor UAV. Through a bluetooth signal device and installing an app similar to a navigation map on a mobile phone, you can control the unmanned The aircraft in a radius of 2-3 km to complete the three-dimensional flight, and can carry no more than 2KG objects.

Xiong Yi Fang introduction, compared to other products, users do not have to worry about the balance of UAV when using the billion Air Ghost, UAV will be intelligent for their own environment to judge, in order to determine the speed of the four rotor, respectively, To maintain the balance of the UAV, "If the drones are going to be dead, he will automatically return to the take-off location, which means that users have very low threshold."

Logistics: Formal use still takes time

According to Tencent Technology, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has applied for a proposal to use drones in U.S. domestic commercial operations. According to the FAA's plan, the initial license to detect and avoid unmanned aerial vehicle systems will be between 2016 and 2020 By then, UAV commercial technology can generally reach the level of detection and avoidance on the planned route.

In other words, according to the FAA's plan, UAVs will be hard to commercialize by 2016. But Amazon CEO Bezos has released the satellite since last year, claiming to deliver drones by 2015. Until the recent Bezos wrote in the letter to shareholders Amazon has been the seventh generation of drone, but still in the "trial" stage.

In the domestic market, SF Express specially opened up an R & D department in its internal department to study how to deliver courier to customers faster. From September last year, SF Auto tested the UAV delivery process in Songshan Lake, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province.

"Taking into account some uncontrollable human factors, UAV projects will not be in direct contact with customers, but rather limited to distribution between distribution outlets," SF explained.

SFU's distribution of unmanned aerial vehicles is mainly for distribution among outlets in remote areas, making full use of the advantages of lacking convenient traffic. From SF Express to Amazon's Prime Air logistics program, UAVs are receiving unprecedented attention. But the lack of laws and regulations for the UAV really into the logistics industry caused a management vacuum.

In China, for example, Flight Standards Department of Civil Aviation Administration of China issued "Interim Provisions on Driver Management of Civil Unmanned Aircraft Systems" in November last year. According to the above provisions, the aircraft is at a radius of 500 meters within the visual range of pilots or observers, Micro (empty mass less than or equal to 7 kg) UAVs in areas less than 120 meters in height are not subject to license management.

However, the distance, height and weight needed for the UAVs used by logistics will be larger than required by the regulations. The requirements of specific commercial UAVs still need to be clearly defined at the regulatory level.

Obviously, whether China or foreign countries, want to let unmanned express delivery to your balcony? Estimated to wait another 2-3 years.

Media or standard UAV camera

In a number of media reports on Beijing's "most illegal construction" last year, several groups of pictures were most clearly shown on the illegally built roof. While other journalists were only able to think downstairs about how to climb to the top of the building, drone hired with a media flew directly into the air, without dead ends gaining a large number of exclusive photos and videos of the illegitimacy.

The advent of the drone made itself a news story, leaving traditional media reporters on the spot no longer focused on the illegitimacy of the rooftop, but was busy telling the leader of a drone with a picture of the drone Urge them to purchase new equipment for themselves.

According to insiders, social reporters and photojournalists are all "bittersweet" among all journalists. Even some insurance companies are reluctant to insure these two types of journalists because they are always haunted by natural disasters and they try their best Close to the heart of the more dangerous event. The emergence of drones did allow some media outlets to discover the New World so they could quickly and without danger approach the new event center.

In fact, CNN and Georgia Tech announced last month that they will work together to study how to steer UAVs safely and effectively.

"We want to share our knowledge through collaboration so that CNN and other media organizations can incorporate this new technology into the news faster and more securely."

With the easy-to-use low-cost intelligent UAV popularization, every photojournalist is expected to be equipped with this kind of "new equipment." At present, the media aerial photography industry will be the first industry to subvert the UAV.