[Tech in Covid-19] Drones

One day while I was working from home, I suddenly heard someone talking so loudly outside around my balcony. My apartment is on 18th floor, so I ruled out the possibility of someone breaking in(XD). When I walked out for a look on my balcony, instead of seeing a robber or Spiderman, I saw a drone broadcasting Covid-19 updates right outside my windows.

This led me to think it may be interesting to share how tech here in China helps control the spread of disease and ease the workload of the government. I will see whether I can make it a series:) 

In the Covid-19 epidemic prevention, the drones play a huge role, for it is 10 times more efficient than manual process, such as security patrol, broadcasting updates, hygiene tips, temperature measurement, etc. More frontline departments are increasingly investing in introducing and deploying drone services as we are trying to put steadily things back on track (resuming factories operation/restaurants is a typical example).

Meanwhile, we also have seen an acceleration of innovative and practical drone applications driven by the demand of the current situation. To solve issues like training UAV pilots, high service cost, urgency on shortened time on deployment, collaboration between pilots and frontline workers as well as the potential cross-infection, drone solutions are required to be ‘automatic’ on battery charging, scheduling & autonomous flight, data collection & analysis. So far, DJI has partnered with more than 50 counties and cities in over 18 provinces to use drones for epidemic prevention. There are also a few enterprise and commercial drone application companies further exploring drone solutions in local government operation & management, such as DY Innovations, Antwork and SKYSYS.

Scenario 1: Epidemic Prevention Emergency

Drones equipped with loudspeakers, can be a simple and efficient broadcasting and communication application with a volume of up to 130 dbs and coverage of 300 meters. Frontline workers such as medical staff and policemen, can efficiently and remotely give real-time notification and persuasion when finding people without masks in public, while also advocating health habits and knowledge during the drones’ patrol. This greatly shortens thorough inspection across communities and further protects the health and safety of frontline workers.

(The drone in the video was asking people not to gather. 'I am watching you here...")

 A bit of background here: police booths are set up in China to monitor specific areas like communities/roads/intersections as a supplementary role to police stations, as booths are more at the frontline able to be close to neighborhood and deal with emergency while police stations are more like a control center and logistic backend to support various ‘satellites’. That’s why the drone security applications are working out effectively in accordance to this system: to deploy unmanned system solution with multiple drones based on police booths and then one-click release to start their patrol and inspection.

Scenario 2: Highway Checkpoints

As an important channel of people mobility, highways are also vital to epidemic prevention and control. Checkpoints are set up for security check and temperature measurement, which creates traffic congestion and potential risk of cross-infection. Drones here can help ease a lot of pressure of frontline traffic policemen. After deploying drone airports at toll stations on key sections, traffic officers can remotely manage multiple flight tasks without learning to pilot drones or going to the sites. They can create drone inspection tasks at the command center, plan schedules and routes, and then dispatch the tasks and plans to the drone airports around different toll stations. Also the tasks can be set and completed at a regular and automatic basis.

The frontline workload is largely lessened thanks to drones. Then the traffic police can focus more on special situations such as whether everybody wears masks, or whether the traffic of tolls is stuck, etc. They can multi-task by working remotely at command center with ‘eyes’ at the frontlines.

And at last, drones fly back to the airport after all-day long work, landing precisely at the airports and charging, uploading data simultaneously to the command center. People don’t need to engage in the whole operation process.

Other scenarios: Airdrops & Disinfection

In heavily hit areas such as Hubei and Zhejiang province, the logistics of living materials is a major problem. With drones, distributing life supplies to residents in a non-contact manner is a safe and efficient way.

During the outbreak, DJI worked with different cities to support disinfection. DJI shared an amazing result in drone efficiency: drones take 15 minutes to work on public disinfection, whereas it may take 4-5 sanitary professionals and multiple hours to complete the same amount of work. Up until February 3rd, DJI agriculture drones have done the disinfection tasks in more than 200 million square meters, more than 3,000 villages, operating for more than 4,000 hours.

Thoughts about Tech Innovations

Tech innovations are always driven and accelerated by demand. This again brings me back to my reflections earlier this year about innovation and integration. Integration, not simply innovation, is a source of significant unrealized business value.

While talking about 'Innovation', most of us are intrigued by the cool products/tech, and of course the unicorns or start-ups behind those engineering problems. But behind those aha moments, we always neglect the scale problem or solution. In most cases, the innovation solution turns into a greenfield and the deployment becomes a disruptive innovation, which means the traditional industry needs to build a SEPARATE business process for the current operation.

Check the drone solution in Covid-19 here in China: quick deployment, uninterrupted operation, unmanned fully automatic operation, support in multiple devices and tasks at the same time are so important in actual landing and scaling.

When we rethink why digital transformation is so difficult, it is important to balance between when we need to prioritize the current business operation, and when we need to revolutionize out of the current operation.