China sees wider application of drones

Drones have been brought into wide use in China in more areas including express delivery, emergency response and rescue, plant protection in agriculture and forestry, and aerial surveying and mapping.

Photo shows a drone carrying out an intelligent power inspection in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province. (Photo/Wang Chen)

The country is witnessing rapid development in the drone industry. According to statistics, the annual growth rate of the drone sector in the country is about 13.8 percent. More than 15,000 enterprises in China are involved in drone businesses while the number of drone owners exceeds 700,000. There are over 1 million registered drones in the country and they fly nearly 20 million hours each year.

Drones are used to spray pesticides in Fengzhen, a city in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

"In the past, it took at least half an hour to manually spray pesticides in 1 mu (667 square meters) of farmland, and it was unavoidable that some crops would be trampled upon. Now, a drone can spray pesticides in 2 mu of fields in two minutes, and the effect of crop pest control is particularly good," said a local villager.

This is just an example of drones facilitating modern agricultural production. Drones have not only improved the level and efficiency of agricultural production, but also laid a sound foundation for stabilizing agricultural production.

In Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province, the urban management bureau deploys drones to help solve the problem of illegal construction. Law enforcement personnel can effectively identify illegal structures and tackle them with the help of drones for aerial monitoring and photography.

In the Suzhou New District, east China’s Jiangsu Province, drones are used to capture traffic violations such as illegal parking. Law enforcement personnel use drones to record videos of traffic violations as evidence, which help them comprehensively and accurately document scenes in real time and more effectively handle cases.

To govern the use of drones, China recently issued a set of provisional regulations. The regulations cover the design and production of drones, requirements for drone operators, flight airspaces and activities involving drones, and aim to promote the healthy development of the drone industry while ensuring flight safety.

Chen Zhijie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the regulations oversee the production, registration, operation and management of drones, provide strong support for guaranteeing flight safety, and foster a sound environment for standardizing the development of the drone sector and building an application ecosystem of drones.

Chen added that drones will empower more industries in the future, and the application scenarios of drones will expand.