KUCHING: A 60,000-square-foot drone factory, Fame Technology Industries, will soon be built on a five-acre land lot at Samajaya Free Industrial Zone.
Digital Economy Hub (DEH) chief executive officer, Eddie Wee, said the proposal had been approved by the state Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Industrial Terminal and Entrepreneur Development (Mintred).
“What’s left now is to wait for the approval from the Sarawak Planning Authority (SPA). The construction will take about 12 months to complete. We hope to have the factory ready in the first half of next year,” he said in an exclusive interview with New Sarawak Tribune and sister paper Suara Sarawak at DEH building in One Jaya, The Lifestyle Mall here today.
Wee pointed out that many people own drones but none of them fly because they either do not have the pilot or permit from the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM) or the drone is not in working order.
“That is why we (DEH) think that we need to have a factory to produce drones and offer technical support and maintenance services.
“I would say that outsourcing services are quite important in this field instead of having a drone of your own but you would have a hard time ensuring the availability of the drone pilot to fly or repair it.
“As a solution, drone owners can outsource to a company like us to provide everything, from A to Z. Such idea of pooling and sharing drones is much more cost-effective,” he said.
Among the products that the DEH is working on, he said, is the drone-in-a-box solution whereby the drone operator does not need to be on site in order to fly the drone.
“For example, you allocate a drone-in-a-box station at every 10 kilometres along Pan Borneo Highway.
“In the event that there is an accident somewhere along the highway, the pilot could fly the drone to the scene from the nearest station and monitor the camera footage from the command room,” he explained.
He also said DEH is working on tree-planting drones which embedded with Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) system which would enable the analysis of plant nutritional status.
Wee went on to say that the drone technology is among the three main key developments alongside green technology and lifestyle apps.
“DEH is looking into manufacturing drones and exporting them to other countries in the Asian region.
“For us, drone technology is something that we must adopt because Sarawak is quite sparsely populated with quite a large mass.
“A lot of things can be achieved by utilising the drones; for instance, delivering urgent medical supplies to remote village areas.
“Apart from that, tree-planting drones would be able to help speed up re-forestation. The government, after all, wants to plant 35 million trees over the next five years,” he said.
The media also had a chance to tour the Hub where Wee gave a briefing on the company’s products and on-going projects.
These included Pay&Go vending machine (prototype), Print4U printer machine, autonomous tree planting Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), Robotic Arm, agriculture drone and SAR-V45-type industrial drone.
