2 February 2019, GUANGZHOU – It is of greatest concern that the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has spread through more than 20 countries and become a global health emergency. To address the urgent need for strengthening disease prevention measures,  XAG announced on Friday that it would set up a 5-million-yuan special fund on coronavirus response, calling for voluntary drone disinfection operations in China, which is hardest hit by the epidemics. XAG is actively pitching in to combat the contagious coronavirus with innovative technologies, as well as assisting local governments on public health safety. The 5-million-yuan fund is committed to providing XAG’s agricultural drone users with technical support to properly carry out aerial disinfectant sprays that help curb the spread of virus, especially in rural villages with weaker health system and poorer sanitation condition. Operations will target at the densely populated outdoor public places and those communities having confirmed or suspected cases of coronavirus. Another focus of applications is intensive cleaning and disinfection of medical and epidemic prevention vehicles moving between affected and unaffected areas.  Users across China carrying out voluntary disinfection operationsDuring the nationwide drone disinfection operation, XAG will cover all the spare parts and maintenance expenses for those who voluntarily engage. Also, strict qualification approval and standard operation procedure (SOP) are implemented to ensure safety and legitimacy. Disinfecting actions would be taken under the permission of Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and relevant government authorities. According to the Novel Coronavirus Treatment Proposal (Fourth Edition) published by National Health Commission of China, coronavirus is mainly travelled via respiratory droplets, but it can also spread by touching contaminated surfaces. Dr. Mara Van Kerkhove, a member of the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s emergency committee, also confirmed the possibility of coronavirus spreading via fomites. Agricultural drone, as an autonomous precision spraying tool, can be a highly effective alternative to accurately release disinfectants over public places. Compared with traditional disinfection approaches conducted by hands or lorry, drones can be directed to spray where it is needed and cover a wider area, helping to improve public hygiene and reducing the risk of virus transmission through surface contact. In China’s Shandong province, XAG’s drone fleets were deployed by a crop protection team on 28 January to disinfect a local community of over 300,000 square metres in less than 4 hours.

19 December 2019, BEIJING – Smart Agriculture Conference (SAC 2020), hosed by XAG, co-organised by Chinese National Precision Agricultural Aviation Centre and partnered with Alipay, was held in Beijing on December 19. The conference featured XAG’s new product launch as well as a Smart Agriculture Report published by global strategy consultancy CLEAR. 400 global audiences, including agricultural experts, government officials, foreign diplomats and agri-business, had convened to share views on developing innovative human-centred strategy for a smart agriculture ecosystem.Smart Agriculture Conference 2020 Vincent Martin, FAO Representative China, argued that we must introduce technology to overhaul the traditional resource-intensive food system, to better resolve the pain points of sustainable agriculture development. “The transformation of agricultural production, rural economy and natural resource management requires the support of business innovation.” Vincent Martin, FAO Representative China Foreseeing the Future of Agriculture 4.0 Justin Gong, Co-founder and Vice President of XAG, kicked off the conference by carefully elaborating the Smart Agriculture POV Report 2020. This report for the first time clarifies the definitions regarding digital agriculture, precision agriculture and smart agriculture. •  Digital agriculture is the technology that digitalises the planning, process and result of agricultural production, such as big data, AI, cloud computing and blockchain.•  Precision agriculture is the agricultural technology that harnesses information technology to achieve precision management, such as drone, robot and intelligent irrigation.•  Smart agriculture is the all-new agricultural production mode and ecosystem based on digital agriculture and precision agriculture. It creates new production scenarios to cope with population explosion, climate change and food crisis.Justin Gong, Co-founder and Vice President of XAG, explained the Smart Agriculture Report Heralding the advent of agriculture 4.0, the report also identifies the biggest emerging opportunities and delivers strategies along the Smart Agriculture Roadmap. The objective is to sustainably feed the populated world with high-quality, nutritious food. •  There are five important emerging trends set to radically reshape the future of agriculture, including 5G revolution, robotic labour, technology cross-border, disintermediated supply chain and increasing demand for transparency.•  Digitalisation along with blockchain technology will be deployed to enhance the visibility, transparency and traceability of the supply chain.•  Information technology, artificial intelligence and biotechnology are three fundamental variables that enormously affect agriculture 4.0.•  To unleash the potential of smart agriculture, manufactures need to evolve beyond a purely ‘engineering mindset’ and take a human-centred approach.•  Smart agriculture propositions leverage mobile communication and deploy data analytics to help smallholders secure and management finance with ease. Emerging trends of Agriculture 4.0 XAG is one of the key participants to fulfil the vision of smart agriculture. Following the Smart Agriculture Roadmap, XAG has actively united data & information, tech-empowered tools and precision management approach as one integrated solution to optimise workforce and solve farmers’ needs. More Than Drone, Towards A Smart Agriculture Ecosystem To establish an integrated smart agricultural system, XAG has released R80 Agricultural Utility Vehicle (XAUV™), AutoPilot Console (XAPC™) and Smart Agriculture System (XSAS™) at SAC 2020. This complements XAG’s existing drone-based solutions and automates every production process from planting, seeding, management to harvest.  XAG R80 Agricultural Utility Vehicle (XAUV™) debuted on stage XAUV™ R80 is an autonomous, multifunctional farm robot which allows third-party payloads and adapts to both plain fields and sloped terrains. While inheriting XAG’s technical advantages in centimetre-level RTK navigation and variable-rate application, XAUV™ R80 can support 80L payload capacity and embark different agricultural devices, such as JetSprayer™ and XIoT™, for orchard spraying, open field weeding, crop monitoring and farm transportation. XAUV™ R80 conducted spraying operation on fields. As an automated steering system, XAPC™ is designed to improve operation precision and performance of medium-to-large agricultural equipment, such as tractors and harvesters. Simply connected to smartphone or tablet and primed by easy tabs, XAPC™ provides access to RTK high-accuracy navigation network which helps avoid skips, overlaps and crop damage. Key modules of XAG AutoPilot Console (XAPC™) XAG Smart Agriculture System provides smallholders and farm owners with meticulous production management solutions from seeding, fertilisation, crop protection to harvest. With simple interface and rich toolkit, XSAS™ integrates precision farming devices, agricultural IoT and AI to build scientific crop model, digitalise farming logs and achieve in-season crop growth objectives. According to Peng Bin, CEO and Founder of XAG, China’s Jiangsu Dazhong Farm has introduced XAG P Series Plant Protection UAS, XMission Multifunctional UAS and XSAS™ to improve management efficiency and production quality on its 5,000 hectares of rice and wheat.  Peng Bin, CEO and Founder of XAG, introduced XAG Smart Agriculture System About XAGFounded in 2007, XAG is a world-leading agriculture technology company with 12 years of technical experience in unmanned aerial system (UAS) and 6 years of practical experience in innovative field applications. Having 42,000 agricultural drones in operation, XAG has served 6.37 million farmers with precision crop protection services on 20 million hectares of farmland. To empower the next-gen global farmers, XAG is dedicated to building digital farming infrastructure, developing precision farming equipment and creating smart agriculture ecosystem.

· Today’s first flight over 1.6 km took 3 minutes and delivered a bowl of noodles.· A joint development between Airbus and XAG.· Start of a MVP service using the Project Vesper Mk1 cargo drone, a retrofitted XAG P30 aircraft.25th November, GUANGZHOU – The start of a limited delivery trial in Guangzhou, China, as part of the joint development of a drone cargo service was announced today at XAG headquarters.Justin Gong, Vice President and Co-founder of XAG introduced the joint developmentThis joint development agreement was originally signed 02 July 2019 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Dalian (China) by Dirk Hoke, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space and Peng Bin, CEO and co-founder of XAG.Dirk Hoke, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space and Peng Bin, CEO and co-founder of XAG signed the joint agreementFormerly known as XAircraft, XAG (极飞科技) is an agriculture technology company with pioneering expertise in precision agriculture and remote sensing drones, founded in 2007 and headquartered in Guangzhou, China.Significantly contributing to the future of crop yield, reduction of pesticides, and precision farming in China, XAG has been developing crop-dusting drones since 2013, and now accounts for more than half of China's commercial drone flights. Integrated with visual recognition, artificial intelligence, farmland land information, and crop data, XAG also provides agricultural mapping drones and agricultural hardware services. Last year alone, XAG’s fleet of 40,000 drones have performed over 6.5 million flights. Airbus and XAG Joint Press EventSince July 2019, Airbus and XAG teams have combined efforts to develop a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) service to start testing deliveries. This MVP is built on top of the P30 platform, XAG’s award-winning plant protection drone. With a takeoff weight slightly under 25 kilos, and a payload of up to 4 kilos, this drone flies at an altitude of less than 400 ft at up to 12 meters/second.Introducing Project VesperThe objective of the trial is to validate a highly automated delivery flight from the vendor to the destination and back, across precisely pre-selected pathways. Joining the extensive experience of XAG in designing, manufacturing, and operating small drones at scale – tens of thousands of drone flights every day – to Airbus’ expertise in design, engineering, assembly, and certification of aircraft of various form factors, this trial will create feedback cycles to learn and iterate on a drone cargo service in China. The Vesper delivery droneIn this trial, a select group of customers in Guangzhou, can order their favorite food from a nearby noodle shop through the Drone Cargo WeChat application. The fresh food is prepared and then the cooked dish, carefully placed into an insulated box, is itself loaded into the waiting drone on a custom locker. The noodle shop being only 1.6 kilometers away, the flight to the first destination locker takes just under five minutes. The customer receives a notification on their phone about the approaching drone and directions to the nearest locker. The drone lands at a safe height, separated from people, and the customer retrieves their food. Delivery drone landingMeng Yu is the lucky first customer of this novel service. She ordered a Lanzhou beef noodle dish and excitedly declared: “This is so cool. We do not have a company canteen so my colleagues and I order takeaways every day. Deliveries could never be sent upstairs in the past, but this time it just comes to me from the sky right to our roof terrace! My noodles were hot as I like them and it took under 15 minutes from ordering to enjoying! Usually, I had to wait for up to an hour during peak lunch hour and often the food was cold.” Justin Gong, Vice President and Co-founder of XAG commented: “With 12 years of experience in UAS development and manufacturing, XAG keeps pace with changing demands in the field of agriculture. Agility and innovation are built in our DNA. Partnering with Airbus to explore drone delivery service enables us to learn from its 50 years’ experience of flying and air safety management. Foreseeing the broad prospect of drone applications, XAG determines to consistently improve the aerial system, to better serve residents in both rural and urban area.”  To be one of first to learn about what’s new on Project Vesper, kindly send a simple email to newdawn@vespair.com