Cold thinking behind the popularity of civil drones

From more and more reality shows, drone aerial photography to Amazon's first drone delivery package, and not long ago, Xinhua News Agency announced the formation of drone news gathering team... In recent years, with the rapid development of electronic technology, The gameplay of civilian drones such as "changing the world from a different angle" and "360 degrees without visual dead ends" has been continuously refurbished and gradually flown into the public's field of vision, attracting attention from all walks of life.

The aviation industry has always been the farthest away from the general public because of the threshold of technology and cost. However, since entering the public eye in 2014, drones have maintained a high degree of attention and become one of the fastest-changing technology products from professional to civilian.

Zhengzhou, a residential property company security guard is operating an unmanned aerial camera to conduct air patrols on the community.

Open Taobao home page to enter "unmanned aircraft", the relevant search reached 38,900, the price ranged from several hundred yuan to several tens of thousands. Among them, “UAV aerial survey” is ranked by sales volume, and a single store can sell more than 3,000 pieces in one month at most.

2015 will be the "first year" of China's drones. Now it has become the consensus of the industry. According to public data, in 2015, in the context of a 0.5% year-on-year decline in total exports of electronic information products in China, the number of civilian consumer drones exported from Shenzhen Port increased to 160,000 units in the first five months. It reached 750 million yuan, a 69-fold and 55-fold increase over the same period last year.

However, with the popularity of the drone market, how to maintain the long-term, sustainable and healthy development of the civil drone market is an important question for drone manufacturers, market investors and industry regulators.

The next "blue sea" in the micro-motor manufacturing industry

With Google, Facebook, and Amazon all announced their own drone plans, this year, GoPro and Sony also announced a high-profile announcement into the drone market. Whether it's following the trend or as a technology reserve, the world's technology giants almost all have their own drone projects. And the driving force behind these technology giants' involvement in the drone industry is the huge market that is expected to reach $11.5 billion in market value in 2023.

According to the 2015 Civil Drone Market Research Report released by the EVTank Research Institute, the global drones sold about 390,000 units in 2014, of which civil drones accounted for 96%. EVTank expects that the civilian drone market will maintain a 50% year-on-year growth in 2015.

In this context, some traditional micro-motor manufacturers in China have begun to switch to the drone market. It is currently conservatively estimated that nearly 300 to 500 companies have entered the unmanned motor manufacturing market. In their view, the popularity of the civilian drone market has effectively driven the rapid expansion of the drone motor market, and a “blue ocean” has emerged in the micro-motor market.

"We are optimistic about the prospects of the drone market." Shenzhen Qunhao Electronics Co., Ltd. is a successful case of transforming from manufacturing ordinary motors to manufacturing special motors for drones. The company's manager Mr. Hu said in an interview since 2013. Since the transition, annual sales in 2014 have increased by more than 20% year-on-year. This year, it has grown rapidly. The sales in one month are almost the same as the sales in the previous year. It is expected to continue to maintain rapid growth in the next two or three years.

"Unmanned aircraft + industry" integration came into being

In the context of vigorously promoting mass entrepreneurship and innovation in China, in recent years, domestic civil drones have appeared in new fields such as logistics, catering, and insurance surveys. Overseas new technology giants have also begun to get involved in the application of drones. Development.

Facebook has announced that the first complete UAV has been manufactured and its wingspan has reached the Boeing 737 level, providing Internet access to the most remote areas of the world.

There are indications that the 'UAV + industry' application will be the real need for the future of drones. Some experts pointed out that from the perspective of professional-level market, the application of UAVs in the future will have more segmentation areas. After close integration with multiple industries, the UAV professional-grade market will usher in a period of revenue outbreak. .

At the same time, the professional-grade UAV consumer market will usher in more innovative applications. For example, in the mining of data, in the application of cloud computing and big data, through the collection and analysis of data services, big data will be formed to provide necessary support for the development and decision-making of enterprises.

Some insiders expect that with the continuous breakthrough of drone technology, the domestic drone market will grow rapidly. Under the trend of unmanned, miniaturized and intelligent aviation equipment, the demand for domestic civil drones is expected to reach 46 billion yuan in the next 20 years.

Civilian drone management blind spots are increasingly prominent

At the same time as the civilian drone market has a broad prospect, it is followed by security risks. The frequent crashes caused by drone control errors have not only triggered the topic of regulation in the aviation field, but also challenged its safety.

On December 29, 2013, in the east airspace of Beijing Capital Airport, a UAV flight caused more than ten flights to be delayed, and two flights urgently implemented air avoidance. Afterwards, the four parties who released the drone were charged with “the crime of negligently endangering public safety in a dangerous way”.

It is understood that at present, China's low-altitude areas have not yet been opened to civilian aircraft, and the management of civilian drones is mostly based on the "Management Measures for Drivers of Civil Unmanned Aircraft Systems" issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China in November 2013.

Industry insiders told reporters that the introduction of the method was mainly for the management of the aircraft model, and the aircraft was not allowed to carry the shooting equipment. However, in recent years, due to the increasingly advanced production technology, the carrying capacity and endurance of drones have been continuously improved, the control distance has been multiplied, and the flying height has become higher and higher, and the resulting safety hazards have become larger and larger. Take David's most popular reality show as an example. Large scenes, long-distance shooting and recording basically have drones.

Development bottleneck and breakthrough direction of "UAV+"

In fact, at this stage, domestic UAV applications are basically faced with many restrictions such as “no uniform standards for airworthiness certification”, “Lack of legal entities for operation operations”, “management training needs to be improved”, and “airspace management is difficult to implement”.

Some insiders believe that the root cause of these constraints lies in the difficulty of safety supervision. The direction of the solution lies in the implementation of China's low-altitude open policy and the improvement of related facilities, especially safety facilities. In addition, the proportion of the general aviation regulations that are implemented in the drone industry during flight operations is almost zero.

Therefore, limited by these objective factors, the concept of “UAV+” at this stage is difficult to become a fully developed development strategy like “Internet+”, but the application fields and market prospects involved in drones have become low-altitude policies. Reform the strong demand dynamics.

In this regard, some experts suggest that China's management of civilian drones, such as market access, airworthiness certification, flight qualifications, and technical parameters of aircraft, patent protection, etc., need to be regulated and regulated from the national level and industry standards, rational analysis UAV application objective limiting factors and countermeasures, exploring breakthrough directions, and guiding the healthy development of the emerging industry of drones.