R3plica

Meet Liang Zhao

Chief Operating Officer @ Antwork Technology

Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China 

Liang ZHAO is the Chief Operating Officer of Antwork, a drone delivery operator in China, and the first medical goods drone delivery across the hospitals in China.

He has a major in aircraft design from Beihang University and rich working experience in foreign consulting institutions head of marketing and operations of listed companies.

What inspired the idea and mission behind Antwork?

With the rapid development of e-commerce, take-out food business, new retail, the demand for urban delivery services in urban areas has been increasing a lot.

Meanwhile, the disappearance of the demographic dividend has led to a significant shortage of delivery labors.

Fast, safe, zero-emission, and human labor-independent robots will become an indispensable infrastructure for urban delivery in the future.

Describe the story and vision of Antwork Technology?

Aircraft transportation can improve business efficiency in the logistics process, but the delivery drone is not really widely used in the terminal distribution unmanned system.

There are airplanes in the transportation of more than 100 kilometers, but there are few aircraft transportation within 10 kilometers.

Therefore, since 2015, the attention of unmanned delivery has increased year by year, and more and more companies have joined.

And with the advancement of technology and the opening of policy, the road of commercialization is becoming more and more clear with the improvement of technology.

At the same time, the mechanical cost of hardware technology is also gradually decreasing, such as chips, motors, and other parts, which reduce the R & D cost and threshold of the drone delivery industry.

Based on these conditions, Antwork Technology was established in October 2015.

Our hope is to become the world’s number one airline in the city and to establish a 100 City capillary transportation network so that all the good things can be presented immediately.

What are the ADNET+5G robotic delivery network and its purpose?

The ADNET+5G system integrates with drones, unmanned stations, and also the algorithm enables seamless collaboration between robots, so as to make full use of speed advantage of aerial delivery by the drones and the user-friendly interaction of the whole network in terms of the material cycle and energy cycle.

In addition, the upper limit of the manpower delivery system will be restricted seriously by labor supply during the process of increasing delivery demand.

The disappearance of the demographic dividend is driving up labor costs gradually, but the cost of robot delivery will continue to decrease with the expansion of the manufacturing scale.

At present, the intersection of the two has emerged, and with the upgrading of technology, the advantages of robots will be a prominent increase in the future.

Challenges drones are facing for use and development?

1. Laws and regulations

At present, the government is still in the process of establishing and improving the regulatory system and regulations for the regular flight of drones.

Therefore, the deployment and operation of ADNET must be in deep cooperation with the regulatory authorities, starting with typical scenarios test operations.

2. Battery technologies

The lithium-polymer battery commonly used in multi-rotor drones has low energy density, limited life cycles, and high material cost, resulting in unsatisfying endurance and high battery cost, which accounts for about half of the total cost of each delivery flight.

3. Public acceptance

The operation of ADNET requires the public to get used to and accept the new service experience of robotic delivery.

Although the service flexibility and humanization of robots are not good enough, they work better in terms of speed, cost, reliability, and privacy protection, comparing to traditional human delivery.

Public acceptance will continue to improve with the popularity of the robot service.

How do you see future cities in the next 10 years?

With the development and upgrading of technology, future urban traffic must be 3D. And the robot transport network is the best choice for future urban distribution.

When the deployment scale of drone delivery is large enough and the cost is lower than manpower, it will be widely used in various scenarios of instant distribution and has a broad market prospect.