A Hundred Billion Opportunities For Uavs Are At Hand. How Far Is The "Air Taxi" From Us?

Under the influence of the new pneumonia epidemic, the demand trend of UAV market may change or even extend in the short term, but in the long run, "air taxi" will always be the vision that many enterprises are incorporating into the long-term planning.

Liu Daxiang, academician of the Chinese Academy of engineering, pointed out in his speech at the fourth world UAV Congress 2020 that in September 2019, the State Council approved and issued the development outline of transportation power, which ushered in a new historic development opportunity for general aviation. UAV is an important equipment for navigation and emergency rescue. The industry should firmly seize this new opportunity.

It is predicted that by 2023, the market scale of UAV industry is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan, and the annual compound growth rate will exceed 60%.

In the field of consumer UAV and agricultural UAV which have been gradually cultivated, the application demand of UAV in air cluster performance, logistics transportation and other scenarios is gradually emerging.

Of course, the seemingly distant "air taxi" has long been the research and development direction of many UAV companies. Jiang Jun, senior strategic vice president of Fengfei aviation science and technology, pointed out in an exclusive interview with 21st century economic reporter that, unlike commercial manned large aircraft, the number of parts used by manned unmanned aerial vehicles is far less than that of the former. In terms of core battery energy density, China also has certain R & D advantages.

"At present, the industry's focus on the research and development of manned autopilot vehicles is similar to that of driverless vehicles in 2016-2017; from the perspective of the process of landing, considering the active promotion of CAAC, the concept of relevant demonstration area is proposed, which can be compared with the level of unmanned driving in 2018-2019." He concluded.

Rapid growth period of UAV

According to Liu Daxiang, the worldwide UAV market is mainly concentrated in North America and Europe. They accounted for 54% and 30% respectively, and Asia accounted for 9%.

In the future, the global UAV will usher in a stage of rapid growth. It is conservatively estimated that it will reach 70 billion US dollars by 2025, with an average annual compound growth rate of more than 30%, while the United States will still be the world's largest UAV market.

However, the domestic market has also developed rapidly in recent years. According to the statistics of general aviation branch of China Air Transport Association, in 2019, 7149 UAV enterprises in China have obtained business licenses for civil UAV piloting aircraft, and the transaction scale has exceeded 50 billion yuan.

According to the survey and forecast of Shenzhen rainbow Eagle Unmanned System Research Institute, the global civil UAV market will reach 20 billion US dollars this year, a substantial increase compared with last year. The main factor is the impact of the epidemic situation, and the application of UAVs will be more diversified in the future.

In fact, for the UAV industry, the new crown pneumonia epidemic is a double-edged sword. A period of cautious travel may inhibit the application demand of the consumer market, but it also promotes its application in different fields.

Jiang Jun told reporters that after the epidemic, it was found that there was a greater demand for UAVs in many industries, including logistics, fire control, inspection and other fields. Especially in case of emergency, UAV can replace manual rapid flight and start to work.

In the past two years, cluster performance has gradually become a focus of attention, and many UAV enterprises are deeply engaged in this field.

Qi juntong, the founder of Yifei intelligent control, believes that "autonomous, intelligent and clustering" will be the development trend of UAV. At the above conference, the company released a new generation of cluster performance UAV "agile bee II". It is reported that in the next few years, the company will focus on UAV cluster control technology and intelligence to do more in-depth exploration.

Zhang Siqi, COO of Yifei intelligent control, told 21st century economic report that UAV cluster performance has been explored in the market for 2-3 years, but Yifei intelligent control believes that such market is still in its infancy and will have a bright future in the future. For example, group performance and fireworks show can complement each other and can be applied to the celebration activities of various companies and governments, as well as the daily scenery of scenic spots. At present, the landing scene is only the tip of the iceberg.

According to her analysis, the difficulty faced by the company in the development of new products is to study and judge the core technologies mastered by the company, and whether these technologies should be used in group performances.

The size and duration of UAV need to be combined with market demand and technical capability. Zhang Siqi said that the internal team considered that the products should be reserved for the future competitiveness, and the long service life would bring different business models.

"The large-scale unmanned opportunities have technical limitations, which affect the flight speed. Now after the technology is upgraded, it can better express the artistry." She added, don't underestimate 5g technology. With the increase of communication flow channels in the future, the application scenarios of UAVs can be increasingly widened. It may be possible to use UAVs to complete live broadcasting in the sky, and remote mountainous areas are more likely to enjoy the life benefits brought by large flow data transmission.

"We hope to promote patrol inspection and landing of large unmanned aircraft with the help of communication. The current traffic restriction restricts the development of UAV industry to a certain extent." Zhang Siqi said.

She told reporters that the company has defined four directions for its future development: formation group performance, logistics solutions, inspection solutions, and large aircraft with man-machine transformation. In this process, the company will consider making a mature product line, running through the business model and technology accumulation process, and then "cultivating" other product lines.

Zhang Siqi said that at present, the company has accumulated technology in logistics and inspection scheme, but the related products have not yet reached the level of commercialization, and the application of related industries is not perfect. "Most of the time now, we help to customize solutions. What we need is not just one UAV, but many UAVs patrol hundreds of hectares of land every day, collect data, and then train and customize solutions."

Although the industry is still immature, the demand for large-scale unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) continues to exist. Zhang Siqi, for example, said that in forest fire prevention scenarios, the use of unmanned large aircraft can reduce the labor cost.

"From the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), many of the core control principles and algorithms are interlinked." She said that the company has set up a branch to carry out targeted research and development preparation.

Vision of manned autonomous vehicle

Facing the future, developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of carrying people is actually the direction that many industry companies are exploring.

Shanghai Fengfei aviation technology released the V400 albatross at the conference. It is said that the company's strategy is to build the air logistics operation system and three-dimensional air travel mode with the main product layout of large-scale intelligent logistics aircraft plus "air taxi" automatic piloted manned aircraft.

Jiang Jun, senior strategic vice president of Fengfei aviation science and technology, pointed out in an exclusive interview with 21st century economic reporter that air taxi will be easier to realize than ground automatic driving. At present, the core difficulty lies in the regulation and regulation.

In terms of technology, manned flight control must meet airworthiness requirements, which is a big threshold. The company chooses to accumulate the experience of performance and flight time in unmanned logistics distribution, and make the product more reliable through gradual iteration in the process.

In addition, the research and development of manned aircraft needs a lot of investment. Through the experience and cash flow obtained in the early stage of patrol, surveying and mapping, fire control, etc., we can better feed back the landing of manned products.

"We are positioned as an aircraft company. Therefore, we should consider carrying people for a long time. Manned is the biggest market in the future. " He pointed out.

Jiang Jun introduced to reporters that at present, the company has five types of products, which are respectively used for line patrol, plateau mapping, fire fighting, logistics transportation, emergency rescue or national defense, and large logistics and manned aircraft. Jiang Jun introduced that the company will promote the first flight of manned aircraft this year.

In fact, as early as the early 20th century, the industry was planning to create a "aircraft + car" concept of flight products, but later found that this form is difficult to achieve. Since then, the industry's research and development direction has become the "electric vertical takeoff and landing flight" mode to realize point-to-point transportation.

If this mode is really realized in the future, there will be no need for runways, even on the roof of buildings and the open park flat.

Jiang Jun told the 21st century economic reporter that different technical routes have emerged in the field of manned unmanned aerial vehicles. Some companies choose to use multi rotor UAVs to achieve this goal, while Fengfei aviation chooses composite wing shape. The current "air taxi" is driving the two kinds of development.

"We believe that long-distance transportation requires composite wings and tilt rotors, which are more difficult to design." Jiang Jun pointed out that considering the cost, airworthiness and landing requirements of future application scenarios, the company chose the route of composite wing.

The difficulty of manned unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lies in its design structure, which will affect the start-up efficiency; in addition, it is airworthiness, which should be prepared at the beginning of product design. "We hope that manned unmanned aerial vehicle products can be commercialized and operated on a large scale in 2025-2030."

He further pointed out that the company's current research and development focus on the construction of flight platforms. The company provides aircraft products, and through cooperation with upstream and downstream, it assists in the transformation of specific industries and designs corresponding platform products that meet the needs. In this process, considering the promotion of landing applications, it is not ruled out that they will focus on a specific scene for refinement. In the future, it will promote integrated flight platform + manned landing.

Compared with the current overseas development trend, Jiang Jun told reporters that considering the higher maturity of domestic electrification, R & D in this field also has relative advantages.

"At present, China's battery energy density is higher, and it has advantages in the industrial chain, so it can speed up the promotion of" air taxi "in China. Of course, the core is talent, including aircraft design, algorithm related talents to join; and domestic engineers work harder. China's R & D and maturity rate is much more mature than that of foreign countries. " He concluded.