Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Ming-che (魯明哲) on Thursday panned Chiayi County Commissioner Weng Chang-liang (翁章梁) for hiring a company that used China-made drones for a Double Ten National Day performance in the county.
Taiwan Drone 100, a member of the national drone team that held the performance, used drones from Shenzhen-based company HighGreat, Lu said.
The drones and drone parts that Taiwan Drone 100 sells on its Web site also come from a Chinese company, Xiamen-based Hex, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Chiayi County Government via CNA
“Weng praises the county as a base fro drone technology, and even advertises this on bus stops in the county, but he clearly does not have any concern for where the technology is coming from,” Lu said.
KMT Chiayi County commissioner candidate Alicia Wang’s (王育敏) campaign office on Thursday said that Hex’s Cube Orange drone, which the Chinese company sells on e-commerce platform Taobao, is equipped with the same chips and technology as drones sold by Taiwan Drone 100.
“You can even see the ‘Hex’ branding on the product sold by the Taiwanese company,” the office said, adding that the sale of the drones on Taiwan Drone 100’s Web site might pose a national security risk.
Separately, Wang questioned the feasibility of drone technology becoming a second key industry for Taiwan.
“If even the national drone team uses Chinese technology, how is that going to be possible?” she asked.
Weng said that drones are an emerging technology and Taiwan lacked a supply chain for the devices when its drone industry emerged.
However, certified Taiwanese factories manufacture the drones sold on the Web site, Weng said.
“This supply chain needs strong support. Don’t dampen confidence in the industry just to serve election interests,” he said.
Weng said Hex is a hardware manufacturer that partners with the open-source drone software platform ArduPilot.
“Some of the key designers at Hex are also developers for the ArduPilot project. After the open-source software was developed, they entrusted a factory in Taiwan with manufacturing the hardware,” he said.
The software used in the drones sold by Taiwan Drone 100 is open source and can by modified by drone users, unlike software used by most Chinese manufacturers, he said.
The Hex drones also use technology from Dutch company STMicroelectronics, and Swiss company U-blox for their GPS systems, he said.
Meanwhile, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said he was asked by Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) on Thursday to coordinate with Minister Without Portfolio Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) to launch an investigation into Taiwan Drone 100’s devices and to determine whether there was a security risk.
He would use the opportunity to strengthen protections against information-security risks, he said.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua
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