On August 19th, at the Chengdu Communications Investment General Aviation Operations Base, multiple drone airports, cargo drones, and robotic dogs were displayed in sequence. At the "Tianhui Yunze – DJI Industry Applications and Cargo Product Launch," Tianhui Yunze Chairman Hu Yanxin shared insights on the construction practices of the low-altitude "One-Network Unified Flight" platform. Civil Aviation Administration data shows that by the end of 2025, China had 3.287 million registered drones nationwide, with a cumulative flight time of 45.3 million hours for the year, a year-on-year increase of nearly 70%. Despite this explosive growth in numbers, low-altitude platforms are widely caught in a dilemma: government departments struggle to coordinate demands, suppliers fail to deliver on promises, and equipment sits idle after installation, leaving the industry trapped in what is termed the "patrol economy."

A low-altitude platform is not merely a stack of airports. Leveraging a "Two Networks, One Platform" architecture and multi-equipment coordination capabilities, Tianhui Yunze is attempting to shift from aerial survey patrols toward a closed loop of "detect-assess-dispatch," exploring a replicable pathway for low-altitude economy implementation.

Escaping Construction Pitfalls: "Two Networks, One Platform" Reshapes the Foundational Logic

The low-altitude economy is in a phase of explosive growth. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology predicts the domestic market will surpass 800 billion yuan by 2026, and as of April 2026, the number of low-altitude-related enterprises nationwide reached 127,000, a 68% year-on-year increase. Yet behind these flourishing numbers, a vast amount of equipment "flies less than twice a year," with data silos, departmental fragmentation, and redundant construction emerging as common pain points.

"Many local platform companies are caught between a rock and a hard place," Hu Yanxin stated frankly. They face both the differentiated demands of various regions and suppliers who lack preliminary research, leading to solutions disconnected from reality. In his view, the core of unified network flight is achieving unified planning, unified access, unified operation, unified dispatch, unified supervision, and unified data. "It is absolutely not just building a platform, buying a few algorithms, and installing a few airports."

This assessment aligns perfectly with Chengdu's urban practices. Sichuan has already built a low-altitude airway network covering 7,800 square kilometers, and Chengdu aims to achieve a low-altitude industry scale of 45 billion yuan and 3.75 million flight sorties by the end of 2026. Under such scale targets, preventing equipment from sitting idle is more urgent than "how many airports to build." Tianhui Yunze is a homegrown enterprise nurtured in this environment—a national high-tech company founded in 2021 at Tianfu Software Park, whose core products, the "Flyer" dispatch system and automated drone airports, already serve government and enterprise scenarios in public security, emergency response, and transportation.

Facing the current industry bottlenecks, the solution lies in the "Two Networks, One Platform" architecture: a dispatch platform serves as the central hub, the facility network carries takeoff/landing and energy hardware, and the intelligent network integrates communications, navigation, and computing power. Projects must "begin with the end in mind," first identifying the pain points and data foundations of various departments, then proceeding with site selection and equipment specification. "For the same 50 square kilometers, the number of airports required varies completely depending on whether it includes commercial areas, transportation hubs, or fire hazard zones."

Above the architecture lies the support of the underlying system. In 2020, Hu Yanxin, as the company's first product manager, initiated the development of the "Flyer" system with the original goal of solving cross-platform data interoperability. "Five or six years ago, pilots had to carry remote controllers on site, the command center couldn't see the feed, and they had to drag dozens of meters of HDMI cables to connect to a TV." Today, "Flyer" has evolved into the foundational business dispatch layer, compatible with multiple equipment brands and laying the groundwork for multi-device coordination.

From "Aerial Photography" to Proactive Dispatch: Unlocking the Growth Path

Building the platform is only the first step; whether it can actually be utilized is the true test for the low-altitude economy. The industry has long been stuck in the "patrol economy." Hu Yanxin revealed that during past research projects, many people were dismissive of automated airports, claiming it "turned the low-altitude economy into a surveillance economy, just taking pictures and calling it done." This remark became the direction for product iteration. Meanwhile, the implementation of the revised Civil Aviation Law in July 2026, coupled with the rollout of national standards for real-name registration and remote identification, has pushed compliance pressure on platforms to shift from "being able to fly" to "using well."

Tianhui Yunze is among the first companies in China to develop automated drone airports. When R&D began at the end of 2018, the cost of a single airport was as high as 1 to 2 million yuan; now it has iterated to the FC400 airport compatible with the DJI M400. More critical is the expansion of capabilities: the platform now integrates individual soldier drones and quadruped robots, and this year completed unified management of cargo drones. Hardware is no longer just for photography—it can remotely deliver AEDs and life buoys, automatically deploy warning triangles at highway accident scenes to prevent secondary collisions, and dispatch firefighting drones to forest fire hotspots in the early stages. "In the late stages of a fire, dropping anything is a drop in the bucket. The value of drones lies in early detection and early containment."

Beyond hardware capabilities, algorithms are the key link between "detection" and "dispatch." The platform has accumulated approximately 400 algorithms, all derived from years of delivery data iteration. "In the past, many algorithms were superficial—adding a bounding box to a video and calling it recognition," Hu Yanxin argued. True algorithms must achieve precise identification, notification, and linkage, directly translating into dispatch commands. Once the capability closed loop is formed, compliance and operational models naturally follow. The system has achieved data linkage with the UOM airspace management system; flight plans are automatically submitted 46 hours before takeoff, and automatically terminated if rejected, eliminating manual takeoff confirmation. "Only with compliance can there be normalized operations." He predicts that the low-altitude future should follow the civil aviation model, generating operational revenue through routine flight services rather than sporadic, temporary takeoffs. The company is currently developing the next-generation logistics airport, with an upper landing platform paired with a lower quadruped robot for pickup and delivery, prioritizing emergency delivery applications before exploring urban distribution.

The value of this normalized operation model has already been validated in real-world cases. After three consecutive months of routine monitoring at a congested intersection in one city, optimization reports led to adjusted traffic light timing and police deployment, resulting in a 61% reduction in queue length and a 55% reduction in waiting time.

In Hu Yanxin's view, the construction of the One-Network Unified Flight platform proceeds in two stages: first, use government demand to validate infrastructure and airspace, then promote industry integration and transition toward market-oriented scenarios. "A crucial element among the 'Three Assets and Three Transformations' is the capitalization of data." He highlighted the long-term value in closing: the normalized operation of small drones is not just about inspection—it is about accumulating airspace validation data for future urban low-altitude cargo transport. When 3.28 million drones evolve from "eyes in the sky" to "hands in the sky," the trillion-yuan low-altitude market will become more than just a paper prediction.