How to promote the drone market to maintain rapid and stable growth? Controlling core technology is the key

Since DJI introduced the multi-rotor drone flight platform and multi-rotor flight control to the consumer market in 2012, the drone industry has become a rising star in the general aviation industry, not only opening up a broad range of civilian unmanned aerial vehicles. The machine market has become a new economic growth point. However, as the consumer-grade drone industry transitions from the initial stage to the growth stage, the consumer-grade drone market will gradually stabilize in the future, and competition in the industry will also intensify. How to promote the drone market to maintain rapid and stable growth?

How to promote the drone market to maintain rapid and stable growth? Controlling core technology is the key

Increasing competition in the consumer drone market

Both endurance technology and flight control technology are important factors hindering the industrialization of applications.

This year, drones, together with VR/AR, electric vehicles, etc., have become the most attractive emerging hot spots. Not only did DJI launch new models of "Elf" and "Enlightenment", it also released the Mobile SDK 3.0 software development kit. . Zero intelligent control DOBBY and Xiaomi drones have been launched successively. Various UAV application topics continue to appear. In fact, as early as 2013 or even earlier, the wave of entrepreneurship, investment and financing in the field of drones at home and abroad began vigorously. It is almost certain that there is a huge "dream space" in the sky of future drones.

According to the "2016 China UAV Industry Evolution and Investment Value Research White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by CCID Consulting, the global sales of civilian UAVs in 2015 were 823,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 117.7%, and the market size was approximately It was US$3.58 billion, an increase of 47.9% year-on-year. As for the Chinese market, before 2010, the market was small and its growth was slow. After 2012, with the reduction of the cost of core hardware such as sensors, consumer drones gradually entered the public eye, and achieved explosive growth in 2015, reaching 2.29 billion yuan. It is expected that in the future, as aerial photography can extend to wedding aerial photography, extreme sports aerial photography, and personal tracking photography, the market still has potential for development.

Li Zishen, a senior analyst at CCID Consulting Equipment Industry Research Center, said that among the many applications of drones, endurance technology and flight control technology are important factors that hinder the industrialization of applications. For most civilian UAVs, its own load limitation makes its power system mainly driven by electric power, resulting in a generally shorter UAV life.

At the same time, driven by huge profits, many companies have entered the field of drones, leading to disorderly and vicious competition in the industry, and low-priced products one after another. All these show that the consumer drone industry is transitioning from the initial stage to the growth stage. In the future, the consumer drone market will gradually stabilize, and competition in the industry will also intensify.

The professional market is optimistic about plant protection and power inspection

As competition in the consumer drone market intensifies, the professional drone market will have more room for development.

According to the actual application field, civilian drones can be divided into consumer-grade drones and professional-grade drones. Among them, consumer drones are micro- or light-duty drones focusing on aerial photography and entertainment, with multi-rotor drones as the main type. Professional UAVs refer to light or small UAVs used in professional industry applications such as fire fighting, power inspection, agricultural plant protection, and police patrols. The models are mostly multi-rotor UAVs or fixed-wing UAVs.

As competition in the consumer drone market intensifies, the professional drone market will have more room for development. In this regard, Dadezhong and Deputy General Manager Jin Lu believe: “Under the current circumstances, agricultural plant protection and power inspections have great application requirements for UAVs.” Agricultural plant protection UAVs are remotely controlled or controlled on the ground. GPS flight control realizes spraying operations, which can spray chemicals, seeds, powders, etc., its operating height is low, and there is less drift. The downward air flow generated by the rotor can help increase the penetration of the mist to the crops, and the control effect is high, and it can be long-distance Remote control operation avoids the danger of spraying operators approaching pesticides. An unmanned aerial vehicle carrying 8-10 kilograms of pesticides can spray 1 mu per minute, which is extremely efficient. Japanese plant protection drones have been in use for more than 20 years, and currently there are about 3,000 renewal drones each year. If China reaches the current penetration rate and frequency of use of plant protection drones in Japan, the annual update volume will be about 30,000. If calculated at 500,000 yuan per frame, the annual market size can reach 15 billion yuan.

UAV power inspection refers to the use of UAVs to carry cameras, infrared sensors and other equipment to check whether high-efficiency power transmission lines have poor contact, leakage, overheating, tree barriers, large-scale mechanical construction and other external damage hidden dangers. The "White Paper" shows that my country's 110kV and above high-voltage transmission lines are about 520,000 kilometers. According to 30 inspections per year, the total annual inspection length is about 15.6 million kilometers. UAVs inspect 20 kilometers per hour, and the annual flight time of a single aircraft is calculated at 150 hours. The country needs 5,200. Calculated at 200,000 yuan per aircraft. The annual market space is about 1.04 billion yuan.

Core technology control is the key

Flight control technology, communication technology, multimedia processing, etc., are the core competitiveness of drone manufacturers.

The industrial chain of civilian drones mainly includes three links: upstream design and testing, midstream core machine manufacturing, and downstream operation services. Among them, the whole machine manufacturing includes three aspects: flight system, ground system and load system. According to Lu Tong, product manager of Huaxiaxin, flight control technology, communication technology, multimedia processing, artificial intelligence and other technologies are very critical and are the core competitiveness of drone manufacturers. It is of course important to develop the UAV industry and seize the market, but at the same time it is also important to master and improve the core technology of UAV manufacturing.

The "White Paper" shows that at present, only a few dozen consumer-grade UAV companies have the ability to develop autonomous flight control systems. Due to the openness of the flight control system, more than 100 domestic companies lack endogenous motivation to develop flight control systems independently. Nearly 90% of enterprises directly use the system platform developed by DJI Innovation or Zero Degree. In addition, intelligent identification, tracking, data transmission, pan-tilt system, industrial design, etc. are also the core links that the whole machine manufacturer pays attention to. At the same time, most specialized UAV manufacturers currently rely on imitating foreign products to survive, and their independent research and development levels are relatively low.

Therefore, strengthening drone companies' mastery of core technologies and enhancing innovation capabilities will be the direction of the next step.

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