The third International Summit on BDS Applications Photo: screenshot from website

As the third International Summit on BDS Applications opened in Zhuzhou, Central China’s Hunan Province on Thursday, showcasing the latest technological achievements and application cases of China’s independently-developed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), industry insiders hailed the vast potential of BDS application as being “limited only by human imagination,” while anticipating its future integration with other advanced technology such as artificial intelligence. 

“BDS applications are rapidly expanding across key sectors of China’s national economy, with coverage rates surpassing 90 percent in areas such as transportation, energy, natural resources and emergency response,” said Xiang Libin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission and an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The two-day summit has attracted more than 1,800 Chinese and international researchers, entrepreneurs and officials from various fields, including satellite systems, rockets, operation control, and data applications. It also housed foreign representatives from countries including African Union members, Russia, Laos, South Korea, France, and Cote d’Ivoire.

Approximately 12,000 square meters of indoor demonstration area and an outdoor display area of about 2,000 square meters have been set up to exhibit the latest technologies and applications of the BDS. 

The demonstration zone featured application scenarios for intelligent transportation, general aviation, engineering machinery, smart logistics, smart cities, and public applications. 

A bluebook on the development of the BDS industry was also released during Thursday’s opening ceremony. “BDS services and related products have been exported to more than 130 countries, providing users with diversified choices and better application experience and promoting industrial development,” the bluebook stated, Xinhua News Agency reported.

In the 1990s, as the US’ GPS and Russia’s GLONASS each launched over 20 satellites to complete global networking, China made a major strategic decision to independently develop a navigation system of its own in 1994.  

Over the past 30 years, from Beidou-1 to Beidou-3, from dual-satellite positioning to global networking, and from covering the Asia-Pacific region to serving the entire world, China’s BDS has become one of the four global satellite navigation systems recognized by the United Nations, serving users in over 200 countries and regions, according to media reports.

‘From afar to our side’

How is BDS related to the everyday lives of ordinary people? To many, the launching of satellites and the forming of communication network still seems “high-end, complex, and far away.” 

In fact, the smartphones are almost all equipped with BDS chips in China. In Chinese people’s daily lives, apps related to online shopping, food delivery, taxi-hailing, and sharing bikes all feature BDS technology to varying degrees.

In 2022, Huawei launched the Mate 50 series, which integrated the short message communication function of the BDS, allowing users to send messages and location even without a phone signal. In 2023, the Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro became the world’s first phone to feature satellite calling, accelerating the push for satellite communication to become a standard feature in smartphones amid widespread acclaim.

In another scenario, smart vehicles equipped with BDS’ high-precision positioning and navigation that travel on “smart roads” while transmitting data to a cloud service will enable real-time dynamic information interaction between vehicles and roads. 

Moreover, China is vigorously implementing 10 major projects to deepen the large-scale application of BDS, carrying out demonstrations and achieving extensive use in fields such as construction machinery, modern agriculture, disaster prevention and mitigation, and smart cities.

The BDS is widely utilized in various fields such as power grid management, high-speed rail operations, and even stock market trading, signifying that it has become an integral part of our infrastructure – yet its presence is often unnoticed, much like electricity or water supply, Kang Guohua, a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

Speaking of its future potential, Kang said BDS serves as the foundation of the future information world, essential for providing time and space data. 

“Its applications are limited only by our imagination, and it can be integrated with various advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence,” the expert noted.