South Korea “to Invest USD22.4 million” for Construction of “Future Aviation Technology Centre for eVTOLS and Drones”

In a bid to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of eVTOL and Drone tech­nolo­gies, South Korea is to invest USD22.4 mil­lion (29 bil­lion won) to con­struct a future Avi­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre in the east­ern city of Won­ju for the devel­op­ment, demon­stra­tion and tech­nol­o­gy eval­u­a­tion of future avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies, reports ajudaily.com.

This four-storey research cen­tre will be built on land that is 6,416 square metres wide, or about the size of a foot­ball sta­di­um, at the Buron Dig­i­tal Health­care Nation­al Indus­tri­al Com­plex, locat­ed west of Won­ju. This par­tic­u­lar com­plex cov­ers 1,012,000 metres and is due to be fin­ished by Decem­ber 2024.

Won Kang-soo, May­or of Won­ju City, said in a state­ment today (Novem­ber 20th), “We are tak­ing a major leap to become a tech­nol­o­gy city that leads the future UAM indus­try in the coun­try, by con­struct­ing this Avi­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre.”

The Avi­a­tion­Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre is a Small Part of a Mas­sive Health­care and Indus­tri­al Com­plex in Won­ju (Cred­it: Won­ju City)

A pub­lic-pri­vate con­sul­ta­tive body called Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Team Korea was launched in June 2020 to com­mer­cialise drones and fly­ing taxis by 2026, “after the gov­ern­ment released a roadmap includ­ing the enact­ment of a spe­cial law that would intro­duce a new urban ecosys­tem cov­er­ing per­son­al aer­i­al vehi­cles ahead of oth­er coun­tries,” explains the arti­cle.

South Kore­a’s “dream team” includes Hyundai Motor, Han­wha Sys­tems, Kore­an Air, SK Tele­com, and Doosan Mobil­i­ty Inno­va­tion.

Deliv­ery and car­go drones are an impor­tant part of the ambi­tious plan. Their var­i­ous pur­pos­es can include search and res­cue of peo­ple strand­ed in the sea or for­est; inspec­tion of the struc­tur­al integri­ty of build­ings such as bridges and high chim­neys of fac­to­ries; and deliv­er­ies of med­i­cine and dai­ly neces­si­ties to hard-to-reach places such as remote vil­lages locat­ed in islands and moun­tains.

How­ev­er, both drone-relat­ed ser­vices and fly­ing taxis “are heav­i­ly reg­u­lat­ed in South Korea where most urban areas are de fac­to no-fly zones,” explains the arti­cle, “because of safe­ty and secu­ri­ty rea­sons.” 

It goes on, “South Korea is con­duct­ing thor­ough ver­i­fi­ca­tions of fly­ing vehi­cle-relat­ed tech­nolo­gies and oper­a­tions to pre­vent safe­ty acci­dents and breach­es of secu­ri­ty at mil­i­tary bases and high-secu­ri­ty areas near Seoul and its sur­round­ing cities.”

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

(Top image: EHang fly­ing over Seoul in Novem­ber 2020)