South Korea: Busan hosts Asia’s Largest Drone Show

South Korea has shown once again it leads the Asian drone mar­ket by hold­ing the largest show of its type in the region between Feb­ru­ary 23rd and 25th, reports xinhuanet.com.

Drone Show Korea 2023, is present­ly tak­ing place at the Busan Exhi­bi­tion and Con­ven­tion Cen­tre (BEXCO) in the south-east­ern port city of Busan. This is the sev­enth show of its kind host­ing some of the top com­pa­nies in this spe­cial­ist field. There are 625 booths cov­er­ing a floor space of 17,600 square metres with 172 com­pa­nies exhibit­ing.

Exam­ples include Kore­an Air Lines who are show­cas­ing var­i­ous unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles; Doosan Mobil­i­ty Inno­va­tion dis­play­ing a hydro­gen fuel cell-based drone; Aeroscout and its med­ical deliv­ery air­craft; Pablo Air; and oth­er Urban Air Mobil­i­ty projects cov­er­ing craft from GS Engi­neer­ing & Con­struc­tion and Kakao Mobil­i­ty to LG Uplus.

Fly­ing taxis are also on dis­play includ­ing the South Kore­an com­pa­ny, Plana Aero, and a mod­el of its hybrid-pow­ered VTOL. The com­pa­ny was found­ed last year by Braden J.Kim, a for­mer Hyundai UAM Devel­op­ment Exec­u­tive.

Doosan Mobil­i­ty Hydro­gen-Pow­ered Drone (Cred­it Xinhua/Wang Yil­iang)

The South Kore­an defence sec­tor is rep­re­sent­ed by the Army’s Dron­bot Com­bat Sys­tem as well as the Navy’s mar­itime manned/unmanned inte­grat­ed com­bat sys­tem and the Air Force’s aer­i­al mil­i­tary sys­tem.

Under the theme “Every­thing about drones, Fac­ing our drone future”, the exhi­bi­tion focus­es on the many types of craft, their usage and scal­a­bil­i­ty and growth of the indus­try. The exhi­bi­tion also brings togeth­er lead­ing glob­al com­pa­nies from var­i­ous tech­nol­o­gy sec­tors includ­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, geospa­tial nav­i­ga­tion, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and robot­ics.

Over­seas busi­ness­es unable to attend in the past due to Covid-19 restric­tions are here this year includ­ing DJI from Chi­na and Fly­a­bil­i­ty SA from Switzer­land. Dozens of gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate offi­cials from eight dif­fer­ent nations includ­ing the USA, Japan, Britain and Ger­many are in atten­dance.

The show also includes var­i­ous talks, Forums and dis­cus­sion groups for vis­i­tors to attend includ­ing a drone deliv­ery expe­ri­ence pro­gram and drone games. The exhi­bi­tion is joint­ly host­ed by the South Kore­an Indus­try, Sci­ence, Land and Defence Min­istries as well as the Busan City Gov­ern­ment.

Pablo Air Deliv­ery Drone (Cred­it Xinhua/Wang Yil­iang)

The event is all part of South Korea’s deter­mi­na­tion to estab­lish itself as a leader in the impend­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try with all eyes on 2027, when the coun­try aims to have exten­sive drone deliv­ery across the coun­try.

The Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port stat­ed in a press release this week that it is to encour­age local busi­ness­es to run small “Micro-Ful­fill­ment Cen­tres” (MFCs) in urban areas to realise quick deliv­ery that takes no-more than 30 min­utes to an hour. Drones will play a major role. These logis­tic cen­tres only require a piece of land for a small ware­house. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is to be adopt­ed to improve work effi­cien­cy.

Else­where, South Korea is aim­ing to begin fly­ing taxi rides and robot deliv­ery by 2025; a 30 per­cent share in the 6G mar­ket by 2030; and space­craft on the moon in 2032. These are some of the goals set out in the Kore­an gov­ern­men­t’s “New Growth 4.0 Strat­e­gy,” details of which were released this week.

In total, 15 areas have been tar­get­ed. These include future mobil­i­ty; space explo­ration; quan­tum tech­nol­o­gy; future med­ical tech­nol­o­gy; ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy; AI and 6G com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works; and Bio­science inno­va­tion. 

For exam­ple, 6G will great­ly help the expan­sion of drone deliv­ery, so the South Kore­an gov­ern­ment plans to encour­age the par­tic­i­pa­tion of pri­vate devel­op­ers. Accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, Korea ranks sec­ond in the world for 5G net­work, with a glob­al share of 25.9 per­cent. Chi­na ranks top with a 26.8 per­cent mar­ket share, while the U.S. trails behind with 17.7 per­cent.

 Plana Aero VTOL (Cred­it Xinhua/Wang Yil­iang)

Mean­while, one of the areas that the gov­ern­ment is speed­ing up is the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of eVTOLs. It plans to open a test bed for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) in Gohe­ung, South Jeol­la, in August. Major pri­vate com­pa­nies, includ­ing Hyundai Motor and Kore­an Air, are to devel­op an air­craft, while SK Tele­com, KT and LG U+ will par­tic­i­pate in the devel­op­ment of traf­fic con­trol. Test­ing the tech­nol­o­gy over city cen­tres is to begin in 2024.

Finance Min­is­ter Choo Kyung-ho said dur­ing a gov­ern­ment emer­gency meet­ing this week, “In order to enhance our eco­nom­ic vital­i­ty and for a strong and swift rebound, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty enhance­ment and pre-emp­tive invest­ment on the future through tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion is very impor­tant.”   

The gov­ern­ment plans to estab­lish a pre­ci­sion dig­i­tal map to allow the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of ful­ly autonomous drones in four years. It also hopes to pop­u­larise self-dri­ving vehi­cles by 2035.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.aeroscout.ch

http://plana.aero

https://pabloair.com/eng/main/main.html

https://www.doosanmobility.com/en/#tech

(News Source: www.xinhuanet.com)

(Top image: Aeroscout Drone — Cred­it Xinhua/Wang Yil­iang)