Korean Drone & UAM Expo 2023

It is sur­pris­ing just how many Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and Drone Expos, Con­ven­tions, Events and gen­er­al relat­ed shows are occur­ring at present. And this is a glob­al phe­nom­e­non, clear­ly show­ing how the impend­ing and new avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion is not only tak­ing hold around the world, but is mak­ing a bold state­ment that its dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion will hap­pen, at what­ev­er cost.

In recent weeks, Asia and Amer­i­ca have held the torch and this week the lat­est coun­try to offer such “anar­chic insur­gency” is South Korea, where its Drone and UAM Expo is being held between May 17th and 20th at the Song­do Con­ven­sia in the city of Incheon. It is organ­ised by the country’s Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, and Trans­port along­side Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City, mark­ing its fourth event since the Expo’s incep­tion in 2019.

Ari­rang News, a South Kore­an media out­let, has even post­ed a video of the event’s open­ing day on YouTube. The out­let on this forum has 629,000 sub­scribers and gar­nered 286 mil­lion page views since it joined in 2009. What makes this video attrac­tive is that the news­read­er speaks Eng­lish and there are sub­ti­tles when Kore­an is spo­ken. There are some intrigu­ing filmed moments includ­ing footage of the sport of drone soc­cer which is becom­ing very pop­u­lar in Asia.

Watch Video

Some of the com­pa­nies dis­play­ing their wares are the usu­al sus­pects includ­ing Pablo Air, Uvi­fy, Hexa­Fac­to­ry, A.M Auton­o­my, Vololand and Soomvu. Yet, no EHang for once, giv­en they have been exhibit­ing at four world Expos dur­ing the last month alone. Per­haps, the com­pa­ny requires a break on its present glob­al tour of the world?

Of course, this Expo fits in per­fect­ly with the South Kore­an Gov­ern­men­t’s thrust to embrace and roll-out around the coun­try both fly­ing taxi ser­vices and drone deliv­er­ies by 2028. Lee Won-Jae, Vice Min­is­ter of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port, spoke at the event on Wednes­day. He remarked, “The Gov­ern­ment will sup­port drone com­pa­nies over the com­ing years where a drone traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem will be set up by 2028 to ensure safe­ty.”

Ari­rang News writes under its post­ed video, “Under the theme of ‘New Dai­ly Life with Drones and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty’, the four-day event show­cas­es not only the cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies of the drone indus­try in South Korea, but also the country’s sta­tus as a lead­ing nation in drone leisure sports.”

A major event, per­haps, lit­tle heard of in the West, is the ‘World Drone Soc­cer Cham­pi­onship’. Around two-hun­dred play­ers from Korea and oth­er Asian coun­tries are par­tic­i­pat­ing dur­ing the event (see video). Also there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for younger peo­ple to com­pete in a sim­i­lar youth com­pe­ti­tion. Mean­while, as anoth­er sideshow, rac­ers from 15 coun­tries are com­pet­ing in the ‘2023 Korea Drone Rac­ing World Cup’. The race takes place around an advanced course equipped with auto­mat­ic detec­tion devices and IoT tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped in South Korea.

The video also looks at a vari­ety of exhibits at the Expo includ­ing a drone that can fly and float on water; a large trans­port car­go air­craft; water sport drone games; as well as one which can help ships that have caught fire. Anoth­er is a search and res­cue drone with a flash­ing light that pro­vides a lifebelt along­side an emer­gency kit to those dis­tressed in the water.

KAI Exhi­bi­tion Stand (Cred­it: KAI)

One major com­pa­ny exhibit­ing is Korea Aero­space Indus­tries (KAI), reports koreaittimes.com. It is show­cas­ing var­i­ous cut­ting-edge aer­i­al vehi­cles, includ­ing a manned/unmanned Advanced Air Vehi­cle (AAV); and a ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing UAV known as the Night Intrud­er (NI)-500VT.

For exam­ple, the AAV devel­oped by KAI is an elec­tri­cal­ly-pow­ered air­craft designed for both manned trans­port and unmanned car­go oper­a­tions for civil­ian and mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions. While, the company’s self-devel­oped NI-500VT has a hybrid-pow­er sys­tem capa­ble of rapid ascent via ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing along­side with a tilt-motor con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Shin Sang-jun, Head of KAI’s Future Air­craft Research Divi­sion, told kore­atimes, “We will lead the field of future air­craft by adding tech­nolo­gies of the 4th indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion such as AI, self-dri­ving, and big data to KAI’s 40-year lega­cy of air­craft devel­op­ment.”

Fol­low­ing the deci­sion to pri­ori­tise the ‘Future Air Mobil­i­ty Project’ in March last year, KAI iden­ti­fied this as a core future busi­ness in its Glob­al KAI 2050 vision, unveiled in Jan­u­ary.

Fur­ther­more, KAI is cur­rent­ly engaged in pre­lim­i­nary research on cru­cial tech­nolo­gies for AAVs, includ­ing an elec­tric dis­per­sion propul­sion sys­tem and opti­mal prop rotor design. Over the course of this year and until mid-2024, the com­pa­ny plans to advance its flight con­trol log­ic and sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy through test flights con­duct­ed using scaled-down air­craft.

Lee Won-Jae

Mean­while, Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Lee Won Jae, con­tin­ued, “To com­mer­cialise drone deliv­ery, we will work togeth­er with local author­i­ties, start­ing in Sep­tem­ber, to test drones in cities with a con­sid­er­a­tion of each city’s geo­log­i­cal fea­tures. We are plan­ning to install flight paths in areas that have poor deliv­ery acces­si­bil­i­ty as well as drone sta­tions in front yards of peo­ple’s hous­es.”

He added that the Gov­ern­ment will improve reg­u­la­tions in line with the lev­el of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment to swift­ly elim­i­nate any bar­ri­ers caused by unnec­es­sary costs.

(News Source: https://www.koreaittimes.com)

(Top Image: A youth drone foot­ball tour­na­ment takes place dur­ing Kore­an Drone & UAM Expo 2023 (Cred­it: YONHAP))