China’s civilian drone market readies for take-off In recent weeks, we have seen #civiliandrones used to fly gifts to girlfriends in hopes of patching up relations and also witnessed how drones became one of the hottest Christmas presents for dads in the United States. The market for civilian drones is growing worldwide, and looks especially lucrative for makers in the huge Chinese market. As more and more consumers buy and use the #technology, the local creators of this new technology discuss the future of the industry and some of the challenges they face, with CCTV’s Jin Yingqiao. Jin visited the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, home to several budding #drone companies, including Ehang. The startup raised over $600,000 in less than six weeks from a crowd-funding campaign they launched on their website in November to fund their new drone. According to Jin, the drone company is now part of an emerging wave of Chinese startups in the fields of robotics, clean energy and telecoms that the government hopes will help transform the country from the world’s factory to a creator of profitable technology. Ehang’s fo-founder, Derrick Xiong said, “drones, can carry a lot of stuff, not just a camera for aero-filming. It carries a lot of different equipment; it can be combined with Oculus or Google Glass or any sort of smart watch…Any kind of input or output devices. So, I would say the potential of drones is huge. As the technology becomes better, the drones are becoming safer and he believes we will see much wider acceptance by governments in the near future. “In terms of the mechanical mistakes, in terms of the obstacle avoidance, we really have to focus a lot on these technologies to make sure that people’s normal lives won’t be affected by drones. I think that’s the key,” said Xiong. During the rescue operations in the aftermath of last August’s #earthquake in Yunnan Province, in southwest China, the local government even hired a drone to survey the damage. There are also reports of fire-fighters using drones to survey large building fires. As long as the government keeps the technology safe and not intrusive, China’s drone technology firms and the millions of Chinese consumers will soon enjoy the boom of the civilian drone industry.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 08:30:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015