news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

reporter | dong yuqing

edited by yang ruiqi and liu yukun

phoenix technology news: september 19, at the "phoenix yufeng·leading low altitude" first low-altitude economic innovation leadership conference held today, chen zhijie, an academician of the chinese academy of engineering, delivered a speech entitled "fully explore the potential of new low-altitude resources and scientifically respond to the challenges of low-altitude economic development."

it pointed out thatthe low-altitude economy relies on low-altitude flight activities, covers the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and is a typical representative of the comprehensive economic form.he also emphasized that the essence of the low-altitude economy lies in the emergence of new aircraft evtol, which not only heralds a change in the transportation paradigm, but is also likely to empower traditional industries and promote the transformation and upgrading of economic forms.

when talking about the characteristics of low-altitude economy as a new type of productivity, academician chen zhijie mentioned the three core elements of revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep transformation and upgrading of the industry. he particularly emphasized the application potential of 5g technology in the low-altitude economy, believing that 5g will become the core of the low-altitude intelligent network and an important feature of the development of the low-altitude economy.

at the same time,chen zhijie believes that the development of the low-altitude economy faces three major challenges: technical challenges, management model challenges and industrial transformation challenges.on the technical level, he proposed the challenges of four core technologies: digital technology, network technology, intelligent technology and safety. on the management model, he discussed the four major management challenges of management system, airspace management, operation management and safety. in terms of industrial transformation, he suggested that at this stage, the needs of government management and services should be explored to promote the healthy development of the low-altitude economy.

it is understood that the first low-altitude economy innovation leadership conference is themed "phoenix yufeng leading low-altitude intelligence" and is co-organized by the beijing low-altitude economy industry development alliance and phoenix.com. the conference brings together top experts and scholars to discuss industry development trends, release the latest innovative achievements, and draw a new picture of low-altitude applications through in-depth exchanges on cutting-edge science and technology.

the following is the full text of the speech, edited and published:

dear academician xiang, leaders and guests:

good morning, everyone! i am very happy to be invited by fengtai to share with you some basic concepts about the low-altitude economy. i am also a fengtai native, i live in xiaowayao, fengtai, and i am very happy to share with you today. the topic of my report today is "fully explore the potential of low-altitude new quality resources and scientifically respond to the challenges of low-altitude economic development."

there are two main aspects: 1. the concept of new productivity of low-altitude economy. 2. the main challenges faced by the development of low-altitude economy. let me share with you briefly.

1. the concept of new productivity of low-altitude economy

the previous ppt has made it very clear to the academician. we are ready to provide great support from the policy level and all aspects of the policy. the basic concept of low-altitude economy has been explained to the academician just now. in fact, it is based on low altitude and driven by various flight activities. it plays an important role in promoting economic development, strengthening social security, and serving national defense. it is a comprehensive economic form, which is its biggest feature. it covers the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries.

what is the essence of low-altitude economy? why is it called low-altitude economy? in fact, everyone knows very well that about six or seven years ago, when our new aircraft evtol, which is a new aircraft with vertical take-off and landing, electric, intelligent, and unmanned features, was introduced, the entire industry was discussing what impact this technological change would have on our entire human life. from the united states and europe, about six or seven years ago, we started to study this matter. at that time, everyone mainly proposed that a new traffic paradigm might change, so many concepts such as uam urban air traffic and urban bus gradually emerged, and it was felt that the entire traffic paradigm might undergo revolutionary changes. later, five years ago, the two houses of the united states felt that the concept of urban public transportation alone could not cover the entire thing. so at that time, advanced air traffic aam was proposed, and you can often see this term.

similarly, our country is also studying this matter. we feel that after the emergence of this new type of low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle, in addition to bringing about changes in the new transportation paradigm, its greater role is to empower many traditional industries and enable our economic form to achieve transformation and upgrading. so we should say that the two are added together, one is the change of the new transportation paradigm, and the other is the empowerment of traditional industries, which are called low-altitude economy. it has a total of four industries: manufacturing, flight industry, security industry, and service industry. this is the main feature of the low-altitude economy itself.

why is the low-altitude economy called the new quality productivity? the three main characteristics of the new quality productivity mentioned by the general secretary are: 1. revolutionary technological breakthroughs. 2. innovative allocation of production factors. 3. deep transformation and upgrading of industries. these are the three core characteristics of the new quality productivity.

let's take a look at the low-altitude economy. in fact, it is a new industry brought about by a revolutionary technological breakthrough. that is to say, the evtol aircraft or the new type of aircraft we call flying robots, this technological breakthrough has brought about a complete industry change and spawned a new economic form. second, from the perspective of innovative allocation of production factors, everyone knows that the core is air transportation. as a resource factor, everyone has a very clear understanding of air transportation. however, traditionally, this resource basically plays a role in the hands of the military and the industry, that is, it mainly revolves around transportation. now we say it is a low-altitude economy, which means that we want to allocate airspace resources as a production factor to the entire economic activity process, and it has also become a core element in our entire economic factors. therefore, it is a completely innovative concept of production factor allocation. at the same time, we are now talking a lot about the application of 5g in the low-altitude economy. why? when we built 5g, we described a lot of 5g application scenarios. the core is the industrial internet. in recent years, the entire industrial internet has actually made our 5g insufficient. later, we found a car network and vehicle-road collaboration, which is done with 5g. now, when we look at the internet of vehicles, the development of ground vehicle-road collaboration also needs a process. so in another sense, 5g resources also need to find a new application, and also need a process of reconfiguring this element. so now 5g is used in the low-altitude economy, as the core of the low-altitude intelligent network, and it also becomes the feature of the next step of the development of the entire low-altitude economy, so it is also a process of reconfiguring elements.

the industry is undergoing transformation and upgrading. i just mentioned that the low-altitude economy is actually an economic form that is constructed by the change of the transportation paradigm, the new transportation paradigm and the empowerment of traditional industries. therefore, the low-altitude economy is a new type of productivity, which is completely in line with our definition of the low-altitude economy and the development of the low-altitude economy itself. therefore, how to grasp the development of the low-altitude economy really requires looking at this issue from a higher dimension.

ii. main challenges of developing low-altitude economy

since the low-altitude economy is a future economy and a new type of productivity, what are the main challenges we face in cultivating the low-altitude economy or this new type of productivity?

from three dimensions, since it is a low-altitude economy driven by three factors, we will face comprehensive challenges in these three factors. first, the technical challenge. revolutionary technological breakthroughs are a process. with the emergence of such aircraft, we have to face other technical challenges around this technological breakthrough. second, the innovative configuration of production factors will inevitably bring about changes in our existing management model, or changes in production relations. from the actual situation, the challenges faced in this area are more severe. third, the challenge of industrial transformation. since the industry is deeply transformed and upgraded, how to transform is also facing challenges. let's take a simple look at it from three dimensions.

first, technology. from the manufacturing perspective, i told the academician that the aircraft itself faces a lot of challenges. now if we can build this new type of aircraft and make it fly, because only flying can generate economic benefits, how can we ensure that these new aircraft can really fly? how to build a flight environment that can meet our future heterogeneous, high-density, and high-complexity flight scenarios, and how to construct the entire flight environment. i think this is the biggest challenge we are currently facing in the entire technical aspect.

i think this can basically be explained in four aspects, namely the four core technologies: 1. digital technology. 2. network technology. 3. intelligent technology. 4. safety. these four elements are the core elements of the entire low-altitude flight environment.

one of the key points is what is low-altitude digital management technology.a flight in the sky cannot be separated from communication, navigation, surveillance, airspace, and meteorology. low altitudes also face a series of basic environments such as obstacles. we are all thinking that all our cities are now building digital cities, especially the physical three-dimensional china that the ministry of natural resources is working on in recent times. all cities are working on it, and a lot of data has been organized in the early stages of this aspect. now we are facing a problem. can we put all the factors that affect low-altitude flight that we just talked about into a digitized overall environment based on these data, and form a complete digital foundation for the flight environment? this is the essence of our digital core. it is not only about gridding the airspace, it is not only about digitizing our entire obstacle, but also about putting all flight elements into an information space with digital representation, which can realize the basic foundation for the entire high-density operation in the future. imagine that without this foundation, it is difficult to ensure the construction of our future heterogeneous high-density flight environment. because these things are both an upgraded version of our current urban development, equivalent to superimposing the data of the real three-dimensional china of the current city with some data of low-altitude elements, which will form a very good low-altitude digital foundation. the key here is the airspace, and the second is the refined identification and dynamic management of the entire airspace itself, as well as the route network of the first phase and the construction of the operating environment of the entire infrastructure in complex urban scenarios. so the key here is that i just saw in the hall that many companies have realized this problem. they go to a certain city and combine the real-life data of the local city with the physical three-dimensional chinese data of the local city, and then digitize and intelligentize the current city, and add our low-altitude elements to lay a very good foundation for the future development of the entire low-altitude. because the entire low-altitude facilities in the future will change gradually, that is to say, the infrastructure built for the flight volume of 1,000 aircraft today may be faced with the flight volume of 10,000 aircraft in two years, and the infrastructure must be upgraded. if we do not have a unified foundation, the systems built at different times cannot grow freely in an ecological environment. in addition, different departments need to build different regulatory systems, including national-level regulatory systems, government-level regulatory systems, and operator control systems. when they were established, they could not use the same language or the same words to communicate with each other. what they built might be chimney-like, and interconnection would become very difficult. third, all the infrastructure around low altitude that we built at different times, including our communication, navigation, surveillance, meteorology and other physical facilities, might be wasted from generation to generation. so i think low altitude digitization is the foundation that we must build.

the second key is intelligent networking.this is very easy to understand, because all the physical facilities involved, such as take-off and landing fields, airspace, communications, navigation, surveillance, meteorology, and intelligence, must be organized in space while digitalizing their capabilities to enhance the service capabilities of air-ground information integration. the construction of this network now faces many challenges. how to build an information-based networked operating environment that is practical, reliable, and scalable, which is integrated with air, ground, and space, is also a huge challenge we are facing now. at present, there is a 5g network, but 5g cannot be used immediately. instead, it must pass the performance requirements of various low-altitude flight scenarios. the communication performance we want to achieve requires the navigation performance, surveillance performance, and meteorological level that i can achieve to meet all flights in my area. so now the communication capability is to build a line between two points, but it must meet the requirements of my flight. its latency, bandwidth, continuity, coverage, reliability, etc. may be different from other communications. it does not mean that i can use it just because i can communicate, but it must meet my flight environment. therefore, many different departments do not have this basic foundation when they communicate with each other. a large part of companies are engaged in information technology, but they do not understand the aviation business, so the basic things they do are basically within their own cognition. aviation is a field with strong business characteristics, or it can be said that it has strong aviation characteristics. when we build any infrastructure, we must combine the needs of aviation itself to build this business.

the third key is intelligent operation management.we all know that the future low-altitude economy will be dominated by drones. the traditional experience of managing aircraft for hundreds of years is to build a set of rules around large aircraft, manned aviation, and transport aviation. such a modern rule system is a human-in-the-loop. our management system for large transport aviation aircraft in the sky is still an auxiliary system. the ground controllers and the pilots in the air manage the entire flight in the form of voice. this form will not work in the future at low altitudes. first, the density of aircraft in the sky has not yet reached a high density. second, the entire operation on the ground is highly complex, so you must establish a new operation mode and rules to ensure the smooth flight of all these manned and drones at low altitudes. this is the intelligent operation management we proposed, that is, flight management. we now see a lot of low-altitude flight management systems and low-altitude flight service systems in the hall, but i can tell you that all such systems are still in the demonstration stage. you see drones flying, but the rules for the entire low-altitude operation have not yet been determined. we who work in information systems know that information systems are actually an implementation of your business logic. i don’t even have business logic now, and you say you have implemented it, but this logic itself does not pass. so how do we build an operation management system? now we have to build it from the rules level first.

that is to say, we must solve the problem of matching the intelligence of the entire control system and the individual intelligence of the flight platform in the low-altitude intelligent connection environment. in other words, we must subvert the current system supervision technology based on human-in-the-loop to rebuild the entire supervision system. so there are many debates in the academic community now, saying whether to draw routes at low altitudes. a few days ago, there was an article on the internet saying that low-altitude routes are a pseudo-concept. he thinks that there should be no concept of routes at low altitudes. of course, there are also discussions about how much the interval between low-altitude drones should be, but we don’t know. how much the interval between manned aircraft and drones should be, we don’t know. we don’t know whether we should still stratify at low altitudes. now the construction of the entire flight rules is a brand new thing, and the world is also committed to the construction of the entire rules. so this is why we have to start with pilot cities in the next step. through pilot cities, we can explore the basic models and rules i mentioned earlier, and then we can move forward.

the fourth key is safety.needless to say, i know that aviation itself has three traditional safety features: air defense safety, flight safety, and public safety. the future of low-altitude air traffic will be digital and networked, which will bring new data security and network security. if safety is not guaranteed, the industry cannot develop healthily. if safety is not guaranteed, its impact on society and our overall impact is very huge. so to be realistic, we are still facing many technical difficulties in building the entire low-altitude safety system, or the regulatory system. so we still need to work hard, especially on passive risk prevention and control, that is, the problem of safety identification of non-cooperative targets. for the prevention and control of cooperative targets, i think we will soon launch mandatory wind wave wireless beacons. this is inevitable. as long as the aircraft is flying in the sky, as long as it is a cooperative aircraft, it must broadcast its position to the ground. so what about non-cooperative targets? in the past two years, we have placed great hopes on the issue of low-altitude surveillance of non-cooperative targets, especially 5ga, but is it possible for us to deploy 5ga in the entire domain, or is its business logic valid? to what extent 5ga can meet the needs, there is still a need for engineering verification. so i think we still need to use traditional radar, optoelectronic and radio detection technologies, combined with new technologies such as networking and 5ga, to build a strong and reliable low-altitude surveillance network, which may be the basis for our development of the low-altitude economy. otherwise, i think the government leaders will not be able to sleep well. thousands of planes are flying in the sky every day. if i really hand over the responsibility of flying in the sky to the government in the next step, the person in charge of this system may not be able to sleep in the middle of the night. what if two planes collide in the sky? what if a plane falls and hits someone? this is a headache every day, so this matter must be taken seriously.

second, the management model challenge. the management dimension also faces four major challenges.

one of the keys is the management system, with government as the main body, industry as the guide, enterprises as the main body, and society as the participant.my question is how to build a new collaborative management system under the premise of the government's main responsibility. to be honest, the government has not been involved in the business field of aviation management before, and the government lacks people, institutions, and means in this regard, especially experience. so i wonder how the low-altitude economy will develop in the next step. if we don't build a completely new management model from the production relationship or management model, it will be difficult for it to develop healthily. so i think this matter requires our government to take the initiative to coordinate military and civil aviation. of course, the top level is also building and researching a new collaborative management system. because in the future, it must be clear who is responsible for this.

the second key is airspace management.now it is proposed to divide into seven categories. all governments have received notices from local regional coordination committees, requiring everyone to report their class g and class w airspace data. now many governments are also having a headache about how to report. on the one hand, they don’t understand it very well. on the other hand, many governments now find some industry experts to help them report. now what conditions do things have, what can’t be classified as class g, and what can be classified as class w, so this is also a business issue. how to scientifically allocate class g and class w airspace resources is also something we must do in the next step of developing the low-altitude economy. for example, i don’t expect to be able to fly here, but i can find airspace for me to do test flights and provide test sites for my drone manufacturers. maybe you also need to coordinate what class g and class w airspace are there in the local area. i may need to use some new technical methods to propose a good means for the management of this airspace, and how to make good use of it in the collaborative management process. so how to scientifically allocate your class g and class w airspace is indeed a long-term issue. because from the perspective of safety and management, there are different aspects to consider this issue, but we can always find a way to utilize these airspaces with the greatest efficiency and effectiveness, and this is what we need to do.

the third key is operation management.the operational management i talked about earlier is about the technical level. what i am talking about now is how we design a brand new digital flight rule to truly realize unmanned driving, intelligent control, and human supervision. digital flight rules are likely to become our traditional aviation from visual to instrument, which are our traditional two flight rules. in the next step, at low altitudes, these two possibilities are not feasible. we must have a digital flight rule to replace gfr. at present, icao has launched the first version. since china's low-altitude economy is developing faster than others, we still have a lot to do around this.

the fourth key is safety.the safety mentioned just now still faces great challenges in the technical dimension, and we also face huge challenges in the management dimension. on the management side, how can we further clarify the responsibilities and rights of the military, industry, and government in low-altitude safety management. second, how can we accelerate the construction of a new law enforcement system and the construction of law enforcement means? who will manage and how will we manage low-altitude flight violations in the future? the public security department will definitely manage it in the future, but how will the public security department manage it, what kind of laws and rules will be used to manage it? these are all issues that need to be fully constructed from the management side in the next step. on the manufacturing side, do we need to re-sort out the safety standards of low-altitude aircraft? we can no longer classify all low-altitude aircraft as one category. for example, aircraft for agricultural and forestry plant protection may be an aircraft with low safety standards, and evtol is a high safety standard. this series of product standards, manufacturing standards, and airworthiness standards need to be rebuilt. on the operation side, how can we innovate the technology of low-altitude scene operation management and low-altitude intelligent management to solve the problem of low-altitude safety to the greatest extent? this is our main challenge at the management level.

third, industrial transformation.i have been talking about industrial transformation. in order to truly make the low-altitude economy a healthy economic form in the future, it must be that the entire public consumes aviation products to revitalize the low-altitude economy. but this also requires a process of cultivation. i suggest that at this stage, we should develop the needs of government management and services as our first stage of assault. in fact, there is great potential for our low-altitude application in this area. in addition to the government-level needs of urban management, emergency rescue, and agricultural and forestry plant protection, how to dig out this area and hand it over to enterprises and industries to do it, so that the government can get rid of the heavy low-altitude operation. i went to many cities to see that the most typical one is the public security. now the public security uses hundreds of people in a city for drones. for non-drone personnel, it is their responsibility to manage drones. but i don’t think it is their responsibility for non-drone personnel. most of the government commissions and bureaus are buying drones, including land, transportation, environmental monitoring, and meteorology. the operating efficiency is very low. you need people and equipment to buy. when flying, you have to find people to cooperate. after the flight, you have to process the data yourself, and so on. in fact, if we hand over all the government affairs to enterprises, we can support many enterprises and guide our low-altitude economy to develop slowly and healthily. at least we can use your government as a test field to do this. second, to b, the current enterprises and governments, such as tourism, short-distance transportation, terminal logistics and feeder logistics, to b is what we are currently exploring. as the entire scene gradually enriches, to c will gradually develop. perhaps in five or ten years, after to c develops, one-third of the comrades present will be able to afford very cheap, simple, and highly reliable evtol. when i go out, i will sit casually. when i really consume aviation products, that is to say, we proposed this concept six years ago, saying that the future will have a revolutionary change in the transportation paradigm of human travel. when this day comes, our entire low-altitude economy will truly be prosperous, and we can truly reach the trillion or tens of trillions of blue oceans we proposed.

that’s all i have to share with you today. thank you everyone!