A drone crashed into the Duomo Cathedral in Italy, the world's fifth-largest cathedral, beneath the Virgin Mary, a decorative feature on the cathedral's spire. The drone's pilot, who was filming a commercial, panicked when he saw police responding to a report from the cathedral.

As the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) rapidly increases, concerns are growing about collisions with buildings, aerial structures, and even passenger aircraft. Accordingly, interest in drone collision avoidance technology is also increasing recently.

According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) (Commissioner Choi Dong-gyu), the number of patent applications related to drone collision avoidance technology was only 8 in the past 3 years (2009-2011), but it has rapidly increased to 21 in the last 3 years (2012-2014) as the popularization of drones has accelerated, resulting in an application growth rate of 163%.

About 70% of these patent applications were filed by domestic researchers, indicating that domestic technology development for collision avoidance technology, one of the next-generation core technologies in the unmanned aerial vehicle field, is actively underway.

Drone collision avoidance technology is divided into 'ground-based collision avoidance technology', in which a pilot on the ground observes the aircraft through a screen or radar to detect and avoid collisions, and 'onboard collision avoidance technology', in which the drone itself is equipped with sensors to detect and avoid collisions without assistance from the ground.

Among these, the technology that is currently closer to practical use is ‘ground-based collision avoidance technology.’ Ground-based collision avoidance is centered on real-time information transmission and reception technology between the ground control station and the drone, as well as drone control technology.

Currently, approximately 70% of domestic patent applications relate to ground-based collision avoidance technology, which serves as a stepping stone toward onboard collision avoidance technology. Onboard collision avoidance technology, the ultimate goal of aircraft collision avoidance, primarily focuses on obstacle detection and automatic collision avoidance control.

The United States is the world leader in drone collision avoidance technology, leading the way in this field with 123 collision avoidance-related patents filed over the past decade. However, while the US has consistently filed 38 and 40 patent applications over the past three years (2009-2011) and the most recent three years (2012-2014), respectively, the recent surge in patent applications in Korea is encouraging.

However, it was revealed that many domestic research institutes and universities are only publishing research results related to drone collision avoidance technology in the form of academic papers, and are not leading to patent applications.

The Korean Intellectual Property Office stated that although a total of 58 papers on drone collision avoidance technology have been published in Korea over the past 10 years, only 4 have resulted in patent applications, indicating that this is an area that urgently needs improvement.

<Representative image> Drones from major companies, clockwise from top left: Amazon.com Prime Air, DHL ParcelCopter, Nixie wearable cam, Google Project Wing (photo is unrelated to the article)