[19.09.2021]
The Innovation in Logistics & Transportation Summit held recently touched on important details of the logistics market, changes occurred over the past few years, current growth points in the logistics market, as well as various topics that could affect this sector, for example, the development of the drone industry. What are the prospects for the development of this market and what problems are now faced by representatives of this area?
uSky Transport also attended the summit. Oleg Zaretskiy uSky CTO, delivered a presentation entitled “Eyes on the Skies”. He reported on important aspects of market development and underlined the need for modernization and the importance of introducing innovative technologies in global logistics. Oleg Zaretskiy highlighted uST group of companies incorporating uSky Transport among other companies, and pointed out that uST is engaged in the development of unmanned transport technologies based on existing aircraft and the company has already made great strides in the development of this technology.
Please read the report below.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!
I am honored to be a speaker at this distinguished conference. The topic of my speech is the future of transport, and the title of the speech is "Eyes on the Skies". A look at the sky, not in the sense of just raising your eyes.
This is a call to abstract from reality, look carefully at the sky, and like Prince Andrew in the novel of the famous Russian classic “War and Peace,” understand something that was previously unknown: touch on the issues of the universe and the meaning of our life. A long look at the sky helped the main character of the famous novel to cognize himself better and change his life priorities. Of course, it is difficult to claim a serious influence on the minds of an honorable audience in the 20 minutes allotted to me, but I will be happy if after my lecture you just look at the sky for a couple of minutes and think about what I will tell you now.
I don't know about the others, but it always occurred to me that the innovative progress of mankind has slowed down. I'm not meaning it stopped, but for my generation in school childhood back in the Soviet Union, there was no doubt that by the beginning of the 21st century, our civilization would set up colonies on the moon and Mars and achieve harmony between the mankind and the nature on our planet.
Remember the 1970s. The landing of Americans on the moon, the serial production and operation of supersonic passenger aircraft, the ultra-deep well drilled almost 13,000 meters deep. Everyone then thought that development would continue incrementally, but gradually the priorities of development changed so much that we actually left space (it is difficult to call one-time actions of famous entrepreneurs as serious civilizational achievements, in which, moreover, the ratio between the real science and PR is not clear), we fly on airplanes and drive cars whose concepts were created in the same 70s.
And in some areas, we even "played back a little". Manned spaceships have been written off and forgotten, supersonic passenger liners have been decommissioned, and even superpowers take more time to prepare for a flight to the moon than it did in the 60s.
One may object to my words that progress has moved into the field of information and digital technologies and, in part, we can agree with this, but, again, it is worth thinking about why? Covering this subject is not part of my speech, but I want to say that everything is not so clear here either.
However, let's return to the problems of transport development. As I said earlier, progress, if not stopped, then seriously slowed down. And there may be different reasons for this.
Of course, first of all, this is the economic component. The last century was characterized by the competition of great powers and ideologies, which forced states to invest huge amounts of money in science, inventions, innovations not only to achieve military superiority (although this is, of course, first of all), but also to increase prestige and improve their image in comparison with competitors. Strange as it may seem, but it was bearing fruit. With the creation of a unipolar pragmatic world, the financial component of any event began to play a critical role. Indeed, why create something and spend money on it, if “there is no enemy at the gate”, and the prospects for a return on investment in something completely new are always more than vague.
And at the same time, to achieve the level of possible commercialization of an invention, sometimes huge funds are needed, for which there will not be enough donations from patrons or fundraising on crowdfunding sites. Here is such a "catch 22". How many times, already in the Emirates, I have seen inventive projects on drawings and files, which required funds to be implemented. And the absolute majority of these projects remained on hard and flash drives because the promoters were told “We will be able to arrange financing when you have a working copy, or when there is a reference to an existing analogue, or when your invention is certified and obtains the appropriate permits.”
Oh, this certification! People have created thousands of standards for existing products and technologies and are trying to measure everything by them. This is, of course, necessary on the one hand, but on the other, what about innovation? What about breakthrough inventions that can change the life of mankind, but which do not fit any of the existing standards? What should I do? Suppose we have to issue a completely new standard for a new type of transport system. Only those who have tried to do this know how long this task is, expensive and, frankly, in real life, little achievable. Use the existing standards and "pull" the new on the old? So, this is because innovation is fundamentally different from what was before!
There is no doubt that now, with the current level of bureaucracy, corporate and state stagnation and “overregulation”, the Wright brothers would not even have a chance to commercialize their invention. After all, when they made their first flight, there was not even the concept of "airplane”, but there was also the concept of “cart”, and they would now have to adapt their aircraft to the requirements for horse-drawn sleds in order to get permission to use their invention, according to the will of the current bureaucrats. Where would they fly after that?
There are still many reasons why there are no breakthrough technologies in the field of transport and let not everyone agree with my conclusions, but there is no doubt that changes are overdue, and it is also obvious that existing modes of transport, including electric cars, cannot solve the challenges that humanity faces in terms of ensuring the mobility of people and goods: high mortality from transport accidents, traffic jams that hit all major cities of the world, rolling asphalt and sleepers over huge territories globally comparable to the territories of such countries as Great Britain or France, and, of course, gas pollution and harm caused by vehicles to the climate and nature. Where is the way-out after all?
And here I want to draw the attention of a respected audience to the fact that personality decides a lot.
A person can find a solution and offer it to humanity. The main thing is that a person who is able to point out the right direction should at least be heard in that " information noise” that covers us like a specially created web with established rules, frameworks and an abundance of meaningless, interfering information (here we can recall the ambiguity of the explosive development of information technologies that I mentioned at the beginning of the speech).
The person who not only proposed a solution to the problems facing humanity and has no analogues in world history in terms of its scale and approach is the engineer and philosopher Dr. Anatoli Unitsky, a person worthy of worldwide recognition and fame. During his life, he published hundreds of scientific papers, 20 monographs, registered more than 200 patents in his name, received seven academic degrees, including a PHD in philosophy. Dr. Unitsky's concept of transformation is based on the idea of our age of globalization and intertwined communication environment making no sense to struggle over the introduction of individual inventions and innovations without their initial binding to the global concept of the development of society and the improvement of the life of all the mankind on the planet.
For example, Richard Branson was able to reach a 90-hundred-kilometer altitude on his rocket plane, and now we are all wondering together how this technical achievement can be practically applied. By the way, no one has come up with anything yet, except to carry tourists. If we abstract from the simple earning of money, then, frankly, it is a “so-so” achievement in terms of general civilizational development. So, in this way, it turns out that "the tail is wagging the dog”. First, we did something, and then we seek what it can be applied for. Thought, it should be exactly the opposite.
Dr. Unitsky has long understood this and, along with his achievements and inventions in the field of transport (some of which, by the way, are already more than 40 years old), has developed a program of a planetary and civilizational scale that can surpass in its significance all the projects and initiatives available in the history of mankind.
A program that may unite civilization with a single task of changing the vector of development from self-devouring, poisoning and collapse to harmonious development in unity with nature and the opportunities given to us by providence. Here, the goal is ahead of the actions, and innovations are carried out not just “because we can”, but in line with the implementation of the planned tasks and achieving the final result.
Dr. Anatoli Unitsky is already quite well-known in the world. A lot of people know about Unitsky string transport and the practical achievements in this area are really convincing, I will talk about string transport a little later, but at the same time, few people know that uSky transport is an integral part of the concept of building linear cities – ecological settlements of a new type, with closed cycles of consumption and waste disposal, and linear cities are part of a general planetary transport system capable of launching millions of tons of cargo into space without the use of rockets and opening up a real path to the development of the universe, obtaining energy and raw materials from outside our biosphere and bringing harmful industries and heavy industry into outer space.
Within the framework of the same concept, Dr. Unitsky's group of companies has created heavy unmanned aerial vehicles based on real helicopters for moving cargo weighing up to one and a half tons. By the way, they have already been created and operate flights at our center in Belarus.
I would like to start, of course, with what is already practically presented on the market – these are unique systems of suspended string transport. Taking this opportunity, I invite the participants of the conference to our test and certification centre in Sharjah, where they will be able not only to see but also to ride the transport of the future. Let it be only 400 meters of the test track for now, but currently we are actively building two more routes with a length of two and a half kilometers, and potential customers have actually placed orders for the first lines of uSky transport.
There are solutions for container transportation, equipment of terminal-free seaports, where containers will move directly from the ship to the container terminal located deep in the land. At the same time, the roads will not be congested with heavy trucks, the system works completely in automatic mode and all the land under uSky transport line can be used for its intended purpose.
At the final stage of development, there is a high-speed vehicle that can move between cities at a speed of up to 500 km/h, that said being environmentally friendly, safe and economical. And everyone here has a unique opportunity not only to hear about the transport of the future, but also to touch it with their hand.
Once again, I invite everyone to visit our uSky Test & Certification Centre in the area of the American University of Sharjah.
Here I want to remind you that uSky transport is an integral part of the global idea of creating linear cities on earth, and the concept of a linear city itself cannot be considered outside of other developments of Dr. Unitsky and his engineers.
The linear city is that island of a new civilization where certain extravagances (well, say, the entertainment industry, crazy consumerism, luxury) are sacrificed to the idea of harmony with nature, health and ecology.
Sooner or later, humanity will realize that huge cities with their overpopulation, slums, and gas pollution cannot but be sources of crime, epidemics, and social upheavals.
To live in small, remote from each other, but connected in communication and logistics, communities is something that humanity will certainly come to if it decides to avoid the catastrophe to which we are inevitably moving.
And again, in the program of Dr. Unitsky, everything is interconnected, and therefore, linear cities, among other things, will be the basis for creating a general planetary transport system aimed at real, and not demonstrative, conquest of space by mankind.
As for the general planetary transport system, it should be emphasized that the project of rocket-free space exploration (or the uSpace program) is not an abstract fiction, but a technically and economically detailed and calculated project, that is undoubtedly feasible.
A ring circumscribing the Earth in the plane of the equator with a rotor rotating inside in a magnetic field under the influence of centrifugal force increases the radius by only five percent to be in space outside the earth's atmosphere. Cargo containers attached to the ring will be able to carry up to ten million tons of cargo in one lift, which cannot be achieved even in a thousand years using today's rocket technology at the current intensity of launches.
By the way, the international annual conference on rocket-free space exploration will start in Minsk in two days, and if anyone here is interested in this unique project, they will be able to get more information by participating in the forum, watching the live broadcast or ordering literature on the conference.
In conclusion, I want to say that the life of our children and grandchildren, our descendants depends solely on us.
As per the calculations by Dr. Unitsky, we do not have much time to change the direction of the civilization, which is now rapidly moving to the point of no return, to grant us a chance for survival and development. We cannot afford missing this chance, like we cannot afford living for today and at best for tomorrow. Therefor we are reasonable people to see the future and be mindful of it, extrapolating today's realities to what awaits the planet after us.
The COVID pandemic is most likely one of the first harbingers of a global civilizational catastrophe, through which, according to many hypotheses, our planet has passed more than once.
Why start everything all over again?
Eyes on the skies.”
