하이드로 호크 – 5G 스마트 수질 샘플링 드론 시스템

Water quality monitoring of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs has traditionally required personnel to collect samples by boat and analyze them in a laboratory. This process is time-consuming and costly, and poses safety risks in polluted areas that are difficult to access. Furthermore, it takes several days or more for collection, transportation, and analysis, making it difficult to respond in real-time to pollution incidents, and data is lacking due to measurements being limited to a few locations. As continuous water resource management becomes increasingly important, the need to overcome the limitations of the existing methods—slowness, cost, and safety—is growing.

Hydro Hawk performs the 'on-site → analysis → transmission' process in one stop with a single drone. A 5G-remotely controlled drone autonomously flies to hazardous areas, collects up to 4 liters of water samples at different depths, and immediately analyzes key indicators such as pH, turbidity, and electrical conductivity using on-board sensors. The analysis results are transmitted in real-time from the field via 5G communication and recorded as digital logs, replacing the several hours to days of work it used to take for a person to visit the site with a single flight. Field tests have verified that it reduces time and cost by more than 60%, presenting a new standard for smart water management through the convergence of drone + IoT + AI. It has an advantage in mobility, automation, and real-time capabilities compared to competing solutions.

Government/public (B2G) entities such as water quality management agencies under the Ministry of Environment, Korea Water Resources Corporation, and local government environmental departments are the primary customers. In addition, large hydropower/dam operators, water supply companies, and companies requiring effluent monitoring such as factories and mines (B2B) are also targets. Internationally, it can also be used in environmental NGOs or UN water management projects. It is a product purchased as an environmental monitoring infrastructure by government and corporate entities rather than general consumers or small businesses.

The global market potential is high due to the increasing number of water pollution incidents and the demand for water resource management worldwide. Drone operation requires solving aviation regulations (such as permits for beyond visual line of sight flights), but regulatory easing is also expected for environmental monitoring purposes. Technically, it can be expanded to measure water temperature, heavy metals, and bacteria by adding other sensors, and can be applied to coastal/marine monitoring versions as well as rivers. Building a data platform linked to the cloud enables simultaneous operation in multiple regions, so it can be expanded into a service-based (Drone-as-a-Service) business. In summary, it has high scalability as it can be applied to various uses and regions in the environmental field.

It was awarded the CES 2026 Best of Innovation Award in the Smart Communities category and was called a "game changer for environmental management." In particular, the drone industry is paying attention to it as a "successful precedent for applying drones to water quality management." Experts highly value the time and cost savings already proven in field tests, and say that water management agencies are very interested. It has been mentioned in kiosk industry reports as an innovative example of the B2B/B2G cross-sector of AI and robotics, and is said to be well-suited to CES's Human Security for All theme in line with the sustainability theme. Looking at the overall evaluation,was awarded the CES 2026 Best of Innovation Award in the Smart Communities category and was called a "game changer for environmental management." In particular, the drone industry is paying attention to it as a "successful precedent for applying drones to water quality management." Experts highly value the time and cost savings already proven in field tests, and say that water management agencies are very interested. It has been mentioned in kiosk industry reports as an innovative example of the B2B/B2G cross-sector of AI and robotics, and is said to be well-suited to CES's Human Security for All theme in line with the sustainability theme. Looking at the overall evaluation,"high level of technical completeness and practicality"is the prevailing positive view, and the atmosphere leads to expectations for actual field application rather than overestimation.