Sky Drone: Building autonomous drone technologies in Hong Kong | Interview with Vivan Cai

I am Vivian, representing Sky Drone, both of our co-founders are from Germany, while I am from Hong Kong, China. The company was founded in 2008, and I joined the adventure more recently in 2017 as Relationship Manager.

Why have you founded Sky Drone?

We founded the company when we saw the frustration of the limited operating range the current drones had. We are firm believers in the foreseen future, all the drone devices will be connected through cellular networks. Sky Drone is pioneering building real-time, unlimited range drone operation/controlling systems through 4G/LTE and 5G network.

With a team based in Germany and Hong Kong, we offer both off-the-shelf products and customized solutions. Our recent product/solution is a fully autonomous solution for drone missions, it frees resources of drone operation, and breaks limits of operation ranging, and provides an ultimate potential for artificial intelligence by giving access to real-time assets(video/photo) process and analysis.   

For which industry 5G will be a game-changer?

A wide range of industries will benefit from 5G, some are already. You might have heard of remote surgery operations. Basically, anything that requires low latency and unlimited range would benefit from 5G. Autonomous drones or Autonomous other vehicles, including cars, will be a big game player using 5G.

Another advantage of 5G is its high volume of data transmission, and in this part, we do see the Drone industry leveraging it for real-time video transmission. Compiled with the other every day improving technology in GPU, Cloud, and machine learning. 

Drones and vehicles will become more and more intelligent. You can imagine a device, whether it’s a drone or a car, that makes its own decisions based on different scenarios to complete an assigned mission. 

How do you see the Asia drone market?

Asia has the biggest drone manufacturers, it’s a relatively mature market in many aspects. Globally the regulations of drones are changing very fast, and in Asia, it’s even faster. This definitely helps in getting through the permissions and consequently results in easier and quicker adoption of drones for wider and wider scenarios. Being a pioneer in developing autonomous drones, we see this market as an advantageous market to implement our solutions. Especially in Hong Kong, with the government promoting smart cities, we are currently implementing a few projects with the government to showcase fully autonomous drone solutions without human intervention. 

What is the main drone application in Asia?

I’d say drones (anywhere) are used mainly for an extension of visibility, through pictures, videos, or live streaming. It’s not different in Asia.

However, we see more and more adoption of drones for other functionalities as well, for example, first aid response, such as emergency medicine delivery, water bottom dropping, or even radiation or thermal detection in critical venues. 

How does Sky Drone differentiate from other drone companies?

First, we are the only 5G drone solution company in HK.

Second, unlike other drone companies in Asia, we are not a manufacturer, we focus on technology development to extend a wide range of drones’ capability by providing them LTE, 5G connectivity.

Third, setting our headquarter in Hong Kong, allows us to quickly access the biggest manufacturing hub- Shenzhen, and utilizing our strength in software development to bring products quickly out. 

Interviewee Vivian Cai @ Sky Drone | Learn more about Sky Drone at www.skydrone.aero | Published by Jean-Baptiste Allemandou @ Transform Asia

We help small and medium companies find new clients and develop their activities in Asia. Contact us for more information on how we can help you succeed with your development in Asia. www.transformasia.co