An unmanned food delivery drone is pictured in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 24, 2023. (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)
BEIJING, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been applied in diverse sectors such as logistics, transportation, and emergency response in China, driving the growth of low-altitude economy.
China has stepped up policy support in recent years to boost low-altitude economy a new growth engine.
-- Iterating products
China's UAV industry has embarked on a fast lane of high-quality development since the end of 2019, said Yang Jincai, head of Shenzhen UAV Industry Association. This is reflected in drones with increasingly powerful functions. For example, DJI Phantom 1, the first consumer drone produced by leading Chinese drone maker DJI, hit the market in 2012, featuring ease of use. In 2016, DJI introduced DJI Mavic Pro. The new drone folded down as small as a mineral water bottle and had more powerful functions for more scenarios, according to Christina Zhang, DJI's senior director of corporate strategy.
Committed to developing obstacle avoidance technology, Autel Robotics, a drone manufacturer founded in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, launched the foldable and portable drone series EVO in 2018. The series were upgraded to EVO II in 2020, with obstacle avoidance capability evolving from bidirectional to 360° obstacle avoidance. The EVO Max series released in 2023 adopted advanced sensors to create paths for 720° obstacle avoidance.
On a sunny February afternoon, a five-seater rotor-wing aircraft took off vertically from a pier-turned-helipad in Shenzhen. Rising to a certain altitude, the aircraft, Prosperity, converted to fixed-wing mode and cruised autonomously 50 kilometers across the Pearl River Bay. The flying taxi landed at a ferry port in the nearby city of Zhuhai, finishing a journey that used to require more than two hours by car in about 20 minutes.
The flight marked the world's first public demonstration of an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft on a cross-sea and inter-city route, according to AutoFlight, a Shanghai-based eVTOL startup that developed the aircraft.
The eVTOLs are propelled by pure electricity, and they operate without pilots, which means zero emissions, low noise, and low manufacturing and operating costs -- about 15 percent of those of helicopters, said Yue Qiang, a sales manager of Vertaxi, an eVTOL startup based in east China's Shanghai.
-- Diverse application scenarios
In recent years, UAVs have found applications across various sectors including logistics, transportation, emergency response, plant protection and surveying.
For instance, "low-altitude + logistics" stands out as one of the most promisingly scalable scenarios in commercial applications.
Earlier this month, Li Meng, student of Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, experienced a unique takeout service in Shenzhen. Li placed an order for food and found it was delivered to the dormitory building by a UAV. It took 11 minutes from payment to taking the delivery, said Li.
The flight route used for this delivery is one of the drone delivery routes established by the internet platform Meituan in Shenzhen. As of November 2023, Meituan had opened 22 drone routes in cities such as Shenzhen and Shanghai, with the number of orders delivered by drones reaching over 210,000. In 2022, the average delivery time of Meituan drones was about 12 minutes, 150 percent more efficient than traditional delivery models, showed data from Meituan.
In the field of forest inspection, Autel Robotics's intelligent drones quickly inspect and monitor mountains and forests to obtain accurate information on forest resources, helping the emergency management bureau of Shenzhen's Dapeng New Area discover forest fire hazards, illegal poaching and logging in a timely manner.
The scale of China's civilian drone sector exceeded 120 billion yuan in 2023, ranking first in the world. The figure is expected to hit 200 billion yuan in 2025, according to data from the macroeconomic research institute of the National Development and Reform Commission.
As drones become increasingly integrated into various industries in China, low-altitude economy, which covers sectors such as aircraft research, development and manufacturing, low-altitude flight infrastructure construction and operation, and flight services, is gaining traction.
The size of China's low-altitude economy as of the end of 2023 was estimated at more than 500 billion yuan, with its scale expected to rise to 2 trillion yuan by 2030, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
-- Favorable policies
China has placed significant importance on developing the low-altitude economy in recent years. By providing policy supports and encouraging business innovation, the country is fulling tapping into the potential of the industry.
The low-altitude economy was first integrated into the country's development plan in 2021 and was defined as a strategic emerging industry at the country's annual central economic work conference in 2023. It was written into this year's government work report as a new growth engine.
At local level, Shenzhen issued 20 specific measures for the low-altitude economy at the end of 2023, including ones nurturing enterprises in the supply chain, encouraging technological innovation, expanding applications for low-altitude flights, and improving the industrial supporting environment.
The city opened 77 new UAV routes in 2023, bringing the total number of UAV routes to 156. About 610,000 UAV cargo transport flights were made in Shenzhen last year, ranking first in China, according to statistics from Shenzhen municipal bureau of transportation.
Shenzhen has a complete drone industrial chain, which helps enterprises reduce costs and enhance competitiveness, said Yang Jincai.
Thanks to the complete industrial chain and strong support from the Shenzhen municipal government, Meituan's UAV intelligent manufacturing center was successfully put into operation in September 2023, said Yan Yan, head of public affairs for drone operations at Meituan. (Edited by Su Dan with Xinhua Silk Road, sudan@xinhua.org)
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