Drone R&D investment continues to increase by 100 billion yuan

China’s drone industry has been rapidly developing for the past 10 years. In the past 10 years, China’s civilian drones and military civilian integrated aircraft have grown from small to large, from weak to strong. In 2022, the total output value of the drone industry has increased by 34%, and the total output value has exceeded 100 billion yuan for the first time. Recently, Yang Jincai, the president of the Shenzhen Drone Association, stated at an industry event that China has occupied 74% of the global market for consumer drones, Industrial grade drones have occupied 55% of the global market.

Angel investor and senior artificial intelligence expert Guo Tao told Securities Daily that in recent years, driven by the dual guidance of national industrial policies and strong market demand, the scale of China’s industrial drone market has continued to grow. Its application prospects are very broad, and with the continuous development of technology and the maturity of commercial applications, the market size will continue to maintain high-speed growth in the future.

As a leading enterprise in the industry and the research and development and production unit of China’s first unmanned helicopter model, United Aircraft has also continued to expand its utilization space in recent years. On April 21st, United Aircraft officially released an overall solution with the TD550 unmanned helicopter as the core carrier, as well as a series of solutions for different industry needs and application scenarios such as logistics operations, emergency rescue, and border inspection.

In the industry’s view, although the industrial drone industry has broad prospects, it also faces some challenges. Guo Tao stated that currently, China’s unmanned aerial vehicle industry is still in the early stage of development, with issues such as lagging legislation and low legislative effectiveness, insufficient equipment payload and flight time, cumbersome low altitude airspace approval processes, lack of professional talent, high price and maintenance costs, which hinder the development and growth of the industry.