China's satellite navigation industry sees rapid development

By the end of 2018, the total number of satellite navigation patent applications in China exceeded 60,000, ranking first in the world, the report said.

The satellite navigation and positioning products from Chinese enterprises have entered markets in more than 100 countries, among which BDS has been applied in more than 30 countries and regions along the Belt and Road, Li said.

To enable BDS to better serve the economic and social development in Belt and Road countries and regions, China has established BDS cooperation mechanisms with countries and organizations in South Asia, Central Asia, ASEAN, the Arab League and Africa, strengthening technical exchanges and personnel training, and building BDS overseas centers.

The world's first unmanned electric port tractor based on BDS, laser radar, millimeter wave radar and cameras was put into trial operation in the Tianjin Port in 2018. It can drive and park precisely, load and unload containers and avoid obstacles without an operator, Li said.

China's main domestic aviation enterprises have made plans to introduce a BDS-based management system to monitor planes in real time.

Since 2018, BDS has become one of the three major satellite systems serving the global ocean observation network.

By the end of 2018, BDS had been used in more than 30,000 agricultural machines in over 1,200 farms across China, covering more than 4 million hectares of cultivated land.

With quick and sensitive detection technology, the BDS-based gas leakage detection vehicle can locate a gas leakage point within a 150-meter radius, which is 10 times more efficient than the traditional method, Li said.

So far, BDS has been used to help detect gas leakage in more than 600 cities and towns across China, covering gas pipelines with a total length of 800,000 km.

With the development of 5G technology, BDS combined with 5G is expected to be used widely in fields such as airport scheduling, robot patrol, unmanned aerial vehicles, building and vehicle monitoring and logistics management, Li added.