Starting in May, drones, will deliver parcels and fried chicken to residents living on some of South Korea's remote islands unreachable by motor vehicles, a major advancement in the country lagging far behind global leaders in the drone sector.According to the Korean drone industry on Wednesday, Pablo Air, a local drone delivery system-developing startup, will start to offer drone delivery service to residents on seven islands in Incheon on the coast just west of Seoul in partnership with a local logistics giant.  It will use the PA-H3 drone that can fly up to 36 kilometers per hour. It can fly for 25 minutes while carrying items weighing up to 5 kilograms and will dispatch eight units of the PA-H3 for the service.The Incheon Metropolitan City government plans to expand the list of items deliverable, including not only parcels but also groceries, convenience store items and food. Pablo Air, which raked in 8.1 billion won ($6.1 million) in sales in 2023, also plans to work with Korea Post. This is one of many drone-related businesses readying to take off in Korea. The drone industry of Asia’s fourth-largest economy is gearing up to catch up with global rivals. At the current pace, the Korean drone market is forecast to grow to 1.3 trillion won ($981 million) in 2024 and then to 3.9 trillion won in 2032. DIVERSIFYING DRONE APPLICATIONSThe drone industry is largely divided into drone manufacturing, which makes up 42%, and its application market making up the remainder.Korean companies, mostly startups, are working to catch up to the frontrunners in the drone race. Meissa offers drone services that manage golf course grass, using its digital mapping and visualizing technologies. It uses a drone and attached cameras to capture spatial information and then digitalize real space information into quantitative data by using its 3D reconstruction and georeferencing technology.Another startup Angelswing also offers drone data services for construction sites, collecting spatial information and visualizing the real field in a virtual world with the processed spatial data. Its drones enable workers to monitor and detect changes in the construction fields in real-time.Its construction site safety management platform has been used by many engineering companies, including Korea’s household names Samsung C&T Corp. and Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., at about 200 construction sites at home and abroad.Angelswing's drones were dispatched to deadly earthquake-hit areas in Turkey. Another promising Korean drone startup Siera Base develops software for drones to enable drones’ Level 4 autonomous driving and inspection automation.COMBAT OPERATION AND LAW ENFORCEMENTDrones will also be actively used in combat operations and law enforcement sectors in Korea. The Korean National Police Commission has amended unmanned aerial vehicle operation rules to allow drones to be used at protest sites to collect evidence of unlawful, offensive behavior and to monitor and detect traffic violations in real-time.The MLIT and the MS and ICT have recently opened anti-drone system drill fields to test counter-drone technologies, like jammers that force foreign flying objects such as drones to go off course or crash by interfering with radio waves.Under current law, jamming is banned in Korea but to counter the growing risk of drone attacks by terrorists, the government has designated it lawful in certain areas for the test of anti-drone systems.Nearthlab, a Korean startup boasting precise flight control technology for autonomous drones, has developed military drones, called drone grenades, that crash alien drones by colliding with them. They can fly up to 250 km/h at the point of collision.The company uses vision AI technology to analyze the approaching drone’s flight trajectory in real-time.To foster the local drone startup industry’s development, the Korean government has selected 17 cities and towns including Busan to facilitate drone delivery, as sites of battlefield resupply and for the drone and leisure drone businesses.It has selected 14 startups to join the government-sponsored drone businesses. (ICE SEOUL)

Fonte notizia: The Korea Economic Daily