UAV applications have broad market prospects

UAVs can not only take pictures, but also conduct power inspections, cadastral mapping, and emergency rescue? More than a dozen young people from Shanghai Boonray Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. are working on the research and development of drone applications, hoping to promote this technology to all walks of life, so that small drones can create more value.

For industrial applications, drones are known as "flying sensors". With the continuous optimization of human-computer interaction and the continuous improvement of the safety of UAVs and their own control, the application scope of civilian UAVs has become more and more extensive. Hu Xinyi, CEO of Shanghai Boonray Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., said that the popularity of drones has risen in recent years, and people are full of imagination about the application prospects of drones, and the era of drone + has arrived. However, most of the new domestic companies entering this field are considering what kind of drones to manufacture, and few companies specifically focus on the application development of drones.

Statistics show that in 2015, 42% of the capital in the global drone investment field was invested in drone software and service companies, but these companies are mainly in the United States and Europe, while the investment in China's drone field is mostly focused on hardware. Hu Xinyi believes that the core of drone applications is actually data, and drones are a tool to obtain data. People can use drones to efficiently collect data from high altitudes, process and analyze them, and finally get effective information.

The goal of Boonray Technology is to become the leader in UAV application technology. Focusing on the core of UAV application, Boonray Technology has built a complete solution including data acquisition module, data analysis module, and data presentation module. Under the unified large structure framework, each module is developed separately for different application scenarios, and strives to perfectly combine the industry needs while lowering the threshold for the use of drones.

For example, the company currently develops a software based on the DJI drone platform - "Boonray Zhifei". The software can realize the flight planning of the UAV, so that the UAV can take off and land automatically according to the prescribed route, and collect data as required. At the same time, different settings can be combined with different industry applications, such as the inspection of photovoltaic power plants. By introducing image recognition technology, the drone can automatically adjust the route and fly parallel to the photovoltaic panel arrangement line, so that the pictures taken are clear and arranged. Neat for later analysis. In the future, the software will also connect with relevant government departments. On the basis of the existing nationally-regulated flight-restricted areas, the function of temporary flight-restricted areas will be added to ensure that some important activities are not disturbed by drones.

At present, Boonray Technology has invested the most in research on the application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photovoltaic power station inspection. Hu Xinyi said that in the past, it was necessary to manually use infrared thermal imaging instruments to climb to the roof or the power station panels on the mountains and lakes to inspect one by one. Now, by setting the flight trajectory of a drone equipped with a thermal imaging sensor, the inspection can be automatically realized. Then, the software developed by Boonray Technology can analyze the data collected by the inspection to locate the problem. Then, through Boonray's data platform, the results can be stored and managed, connected to the enterprise ERP, and dispatched to the workers. Perform precise inspections.

Different environments have different performance requirements for UAVs. Boonray Technology has launched different flight platforms for different environments (farmland, mountains, ponds, etc.), and can do some customized development for special environments. For example, it is equipped with a variety of sensors (thermal imaging or visible light) to realize automatic flight planning, precise positioning and intelligent obstacle avoidance.

The company has been established for nearly 2 years, and there have been many emerging applications across fields. Recently, the company has been discussing the application of drone data in smart city construction with the Xuhui District Government. It also signed a contract with SIIC to explore the application of drone precision agriculture in Chongming, and analyze the growth of crops through the data collected by drones to achieve precise irrigation.

In Hu Xinyi's eyes, drones are actually a kind of robots, and they are the fastest-growing special robots. At the same time, he has a philosophy that it is only valuable to make machines serve people, so he has never stopped exploring the application of robots. At present, the company's employees are relatively young, most of them are post-85s or even post-90s. There are academies who graduated from famous schools, and there are practical teams with more than ten years of experience in model aircraft.

In the future, the company also plans to build a drone data platform in the cloud to help companies solve problems and make decisions through aerial data obtained by drones. Hu Xinyi believes that the application of drones is very wide, the imagination space is very large, and the value of aerial data mining is also very large, even beyond imagination. For example, data can be applied to investment, "talk to some people in the financial field and say that if we can collect some agricultural planting data in Xinjiang and Northeast China and give it to commodity analysts, it can help to judge the trend of crop futures market this year." If applied When it comes to disaster relief, such as rapid data collection after an earthquake, rescue plans can be made as quickly as possible.