KOTA KINABALU: Sabah has the chance of becoming the first to harness the unmanned aerial services (UAS) technologies in Malaysia, said Layang Layang Helicopter Academy Sdn Bhd Head of Training Captain Sudhir A K Kumaren.
According to Sudhir, gearing the technology towards business and opportunities for Malaysians as a while, the state is looking at almost a USD140 million, approximately RM600 billion, chunk globally.
“Sabah has the opportunity now to leap ahead of the rest of Malaysia to be able to bring this kind of training to all the young and also experienced enthusiasts who would like to take it up,” said Sudhir at a press conference at LLHA in Tanjung Aru here yesterday.
Therefore, he stressed it is important to gear and change the mindset of people so they can utilize unmanned aerial system to improve or to increase their revenue in various business areas.
Sudhir stressed the first approach is to raise awareness and understand the legislation so UAS can take place in the people’s day to day life in Malaysia.
He said with this empowerment, various elevated and new opportunities will be up for grabs by the government, present and future entrepreneurs or drone enthusiasts.
“In terms of logistics and distribution network, and congestion in the city centre, you will find that distributions of parcels, parcel delivery, mail and so on is becoming a problem especially for large cities. It is already occurring in Kota Kinabalu, so what we are offering in this domain is for the city planners themselves to think about how we can use unmanned aerial system to improve the delivery service in the city center without causing congestion. You get more courier services, more motorbikes and vans, it is not going to solve the problem,” explained Sudhir.
“A successful business in Malaysia has gone leaps and bounds that they have in two years captured almost 30% of the aerial photography, which used to be done by our conventional helicopter operator. They have successfully disrupted our business and taken over this large chunk of the business in aerial photography and survey,” he added.
Sudhir also highlighted that the UAS is also making constructively great strides in e-Hailing, in the future of the aviation system and even bringing about change in security especially by utilizing the technology to gather intelligence or monitoring real time threats.
However, he reminded that the public must be properly trained not only to use the technology but understand the propagated legislation of drones.
“If more and more entrepreneurs latch onto this and do something, it is a matter of time before they knock each other. So we are talking about a management sector that is more user-friendly with the drone sector. We cannot make prohibitive, the technology is not going to be useful to us and we are going to fall behind,” said Sudhir.
“We see the negative usage of the drone, in that you see drones dropping bombs at ISIS in the Middle East and drones being used to record damages of bombs and things like that. But the positive use of the drones are so many that will impact us in the future,” chimed in LLHA Principal Lt Col Frank Chong Keng Lay.
“There are a lot rich people in Malaysia who can afford drones but you don’t want them to buy the drones and go off like that, fly it and cause accidents. They must know what they can do and what they are not allowed to do,” he added.