DroneDJ Weekly: CES recap, Autel owner interview, and more [Video]

Seth Kurkowski | Jan 20 2022 - 2:09 pm PT

Yifei and Seth discuss this week’s top stories, recap what CES was like this year, and interview Autel’s owner Maxwell Lee.

CES 2022 recap and interview with Maxwell Lee

While it fell short of meeting expectations from years prior, CES still had great finds and opportunities to speak with companies trying to innovate in the drone industry. There was a good spread of tech to check out from tethered systems to support events and disaster areas to Autel and Sony.

We spent a good amount of time with XDynamics and Autel, speaking with both about the new products they were announcing. You can find our full interview with Autel’s Maxwell Lee here. It was great to meet and talk shop with him. Lee understands the industry well and wants to keep pushing what drones can do commercially and in the enterprise space.

XDynamics is a lesser-known company but showed off a great product. Its Evolve 2 reminded me of what a Phantom 5 should be. It’s a beast with a micro 4/3 sensor with interchangeable lenses on the front shooting up to 4k at 120 fps or Apple ProRes. Another product that also gets me excited is XDynamics’ handheld gimbal with a similar camera system. It’s not out for sale yet, but the company hopes to launch the gimbal later this year.

Check your drone’s memory card!

Just for laughs, we discussed the memory card found by the Israeli military that ended up showing who the pilot was. It’s a good reminder to double-check those SD cards before you head out for a shoot. No one wants to be out in the middle of a flight when you run out of memory space all of a sudden.

A drone for the air and water

A new kind of drone is coming to the market, one that can fly in the air and swim underwater. The “Sea-Air Integrated Drone” is meant for underwater expeditions rather than fun flying like other drones.

Really it’s two drones in one, a hexacopter that features a claw-like mechanism under its belly and foam flotation devices. Once over the water, it can “land” and deploy the sea-faring drone controlled via a tether. Once shooting is complete, the hexacopter grabs the sea drone and takes back off. Pretty clever idea when you think about it. No more need for boats to drive out to inspection locations.