China

The Chinese police are investigating a situation in which a Chinese toddler incurred facial injuries from an ‘out-of-control’ drone ‘flown by expat teen’. After the young boy was hit by the unmanned aerial vehicle, the drone pilot, a 14-year-old expat with blond hair according to eyewitnesses, grabbed the aircraft and fled the scene.

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The architectural design firm, Foster + Partners unveiled the new head offices for Chinese drone-maker, DJI that is currently being built in Shenzhen. The new building consists of two towers connected by a sky bridge from which drones can be launched directly. The idea behind the design is to move away from a traditional office space and instead build a creative community in the sky. The building is currently under construction.

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Last Monday, we wrote about the Kivu report’s findings. Today we are taking a closer look as DJI has sent us a copy of the full report. Because of competitive reasons the Chinese drone maker has requested us not to post the entire report online or share any of the images. However, we are free to share segments of the text with you. The 27-page document is the result of Kivu Consulting’s forensic investigation of DJI’s UAV Data Transmission & Storage practices and contains information about Kivu’s methodology, analysis, findings, and explains up to a degree what information is collected and to which servers it is going. For their investigation, Kivu independently bought a DJI Spark, Mavic Pro, Phantom 4 Pro and Inspire 2 model drones as well as a Huawei Honor 5x smartphone with the Android operating system and an iPhone SE running iOS. We went through the entire report to see if any new information came to light and to see where your information might be going to.

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Last year DJI dealt with a number of cybersecurity-related issues, including a hot-patch mechanism in their DJI Go 4 app, a researcher who found sensitive user data accessible on Amazon Web Services servers, the U.S. Army declaring to no longer use DJI drones, a claim from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that DJI drones could perform facial recognition and U.S. officials who wondered whether DJI was sending sensitive information back to China. Today, DJI released the summarized findings of an independent report, but paid for by DJI, from Kivu Consulting, Inc. in a response to these allegations. Kivu concluded that “users have control over the types of data DJI drones collect, store, and transmit.”

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The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, has begun to lay the groundworks of what will become a low-altitude traffic management guidance for domestic unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). In September this year, the organization will host their second Drone Enable/2 Symposium to facilitate a global approach to safely integrate UAS traffic management systems into the existing manned airspace. Drone industry experts, innovators, and academia are invited to submit their proposals ahead of this year’s event in Chengdu, China.

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The largest courier company in China, SF Holding Co. was granted a government license to operate drones, opening up the possibility for parcel deliveries by drone. More than 40 billion packages were shipped around China in 2017 and that number is expected to rise to 49 billion in 2018 according to the State Post Bureau, China’s delivery-industry watchdog.

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A few weeks ago, during a press event in China, Shenzhen-based DJI Technology Co. Ltd. announced three new agricultural drones: the MG-1S Advanced, the MG-1P, and the MG-1P RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) version. These drones can be used for monitoring crops as well as spraying pesticides. DJI will price these new unmanned aerial vehicles 12% less expensive than their previous models launched in November 2016. These new low prices have drawn the attention from competitors who have stated that the Chinese drone maker is “disturbing the industry.”

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The first ever FAI World Fly-In Expo was held from November 4 to 7, in Wuhan, China. The show featured hundreds of aircraft, including jets, helicopters, hot air balloons and of course drones. According to an article in the NY Times, the drones were actually the stars of the event.

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After this holiday shopping season, there will be more drones in the hands of consumers than ever before. Governments and aviation authorities around the world are concerned that the increase in the number of amateur drone pilots will lead to more drone incidents, such as drone sightings close to airports, near-misses and potentially more actual drone and airplane collisions. This raises the question, how much damage a drone would cause to an airplane in case of a collision? Scientists have used computer simulations to try and answer this question.

The Chinese aviation authorities went one step further and created an actual cockpit mockup, mounted it to a rocket and launched it at a drone at the usual airplane speed.

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Two days ago we reported about the new DJI Phantom 4 RTK drone being spotted at an event in China. Today we can confirm that this drone is not some photoshopped Phantom, as some people on social media seem to believe, but that it is indeed a new DJI drone. The drone was shown at an official DJI event in China where two new agricultural drones, the MG-1S Advanced and the MG-1P, were announced. 
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Drone taxi EHang 184 was introduced at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province in China on December 4, 2017. The drone taxi has automatic navigation and can take off and land vertically. No runway needed.

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China accuses India of invading Chinese airspace with a drone days before the Chinese minister Wang Yi is supposed to visit New Delhi. India’s Ministry of Defense said on Thursday that it had lost control over the drone and that Indian border security personnel alerted their Chinese counterparts immediately.

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In the not so distant future, not only will cargo move on the ground on autonomous trucks but more valuable time sensitive goods will move through the air with automated UAV transport as well. China is ahead of the game here and this week tested what is believed to be the largest capacity civilian drone in northwest Shaanxi Province Thursday.
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Chinese power companies have found a more effective, but not necessarily a cleaner way, to remove trash hanging from power lines. The simply use flame-throwing drones to burn the trash off. According to Mashable, people have reported seeing these drones burning off items such as balloons and kites tangled up in the wires, out of reach of the maintenance crews.

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