Taiwan's ITRI showcases drone technology at European expo

Düsseldorf, Germany, Feb. 21 (CNA) Several Taiwanese organizations led by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) recently showcased the nation's latest milestones in drone engineering at a European trade show for autonomous systems, autonomous mobility and robotics in Germany.

Held in the German city of Düsseldorf from Feb. 18-20, Xponential Europe 2025 invited companies from all over the world to exchange ideas and network while promoting their latest products.

According to Hank Yeh (葉時昊) of ITRI, the institute's artificial intelligence (AI) drone display aimed to highlight the five main applications of Taiwan's drone engineering.

The five applications were bridge inspections, street intersection safety detection, smart low-carbon pelagic fish location systems, smart warehousing and wide-range rapid modeling, Yeh said.

Yeh touched on the first three applications, explaining that drone bridge inspection replaces the traditional method of suspending an engineer in a safety harness to manually inspect the bottom of bridges.

Through video footage and remote tagging, drones can drastically lower the risks to engineers in the field.

He also said intersection safety drones have been installed at 69 junctions in 12 of Taiwan's municipalities to test run the AI tech that was engineered to analyze the correlation between traffic flow and motor accidents.

On the smart low-carbon pelagic fish location system, Yeh said the ITRI tech incorporates a movement detection recall mechanism which adjusts its landing markers to accurately identify the size and number of the schools of fish monitored.

With its automatic return function, the tech drastically cuts down costs incurred by traditional manual retrieval such as helicopters which generally averages NT$180,000 (US$5,500) per year, Yeh said.

ITRI also presented hydrogen fuel cells and lithium batteries at the show, which the institute's Xie Deng-cun (謝登存) explained are greener and have better practical applications when installed in drones.

The institute's Chang Jih-yang (張日陽) said ITRI also presented integral drone components as part of its hardware display.

ITRI showed drone speed controls and motors, Chang said, adding that the department which developed the two hardware items used to focus primarily on motor controllers before extending their expertise into drones.

ITRI also intends to strengthen its drone software programming and combine it with the institute's aerial speed controller to create a Taiwanese autonomous supply chain, Chang added.