With a quick online reservation, residents in the central Chinese city of Zhuzhou can now board a bus within five to 10 minutes at “virtual bus stops”. Introduced in mid-October, this bus fleet serves a community of 120,000 people, guided by China’s homegrown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS).
Named after the Big Dipper constellation, BDS has become integral to navigation for both public transport and specialized fields, including smart logistics, agriculture and disaster monitoring.
This expansion of BDS applications drew attention at the just-concluded third International Summit on BDS Applications in Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, where the technology’s growing versatility was on full display. During the summit, 142 projects were signed, totalling an investment of 58.2 billion yuan (approximately U$8.2 billion), focusing on applications of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) in areas like pipeline detection and disaster relief in Indonesia.
BDS has significantly boosted China’s satellite navigation industry, which saw a 7.09 per cent growth, reaching an output value of 536.2 billion yuan in 2023.
A UN representative highlighted China’s role in global navigation systems, noting BDS’s expansion for industrial and public use. Since its inception in 1994, BDS has evolved to provide global navigation services, now serving over 130 countries.
Xinhua
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