Haye Kesteloo

With Skydio shipping the first orders of their autonomous Skydio 2 drone and yesterday’s news from Autel Robotics and their new Autel Evo 2 drone, it seems that DJI is finally facing some serious competition. According to a person familiar with the situation, the sudden and serious competition from Autel has hit the DJI consumer division “like an earthquake”. It left many DJI employees shaking their heads as they had no idea that the Autel Evo 2 was coming.

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Today through industry insiders and an FCC filing we learn about the new and surprising specs of the upcoming Autel Evo 2 drone. This new foldable drone from Autel Robotics is a real monster and it will feature user-changeable gimbal modules that offer you the choice of an 8K video camera, a 6K video camera with a 1-inch sensor, or a dual-sensor gimbal with an infrared camera and an 8K video camera. And if that wasn’t enough to get your attention, it will fly for 35 minutes!

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Not only are people still coming up with new drone applications, but they are also still coming up with new drone designs. How about the SQUID drone that is launched from a cannon mounted in the bed of a moving truck. Once the SQUID reached a certain altitude, it deploys and flies away like a ‘normal’ drone.

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Things are looking up as the drone industry is expected to reach $100 billion by 2020 and even up to $1.5 trillion by 2040 according to Morgan Stanley. Grab a cup of coffee and take a look at this six-minute video from CNBC in which David Reid gives a quick update.

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U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Elaine L. Chao explains in an opinion piece, titled “Prioritizing safety in the drone revolution”, why safe and responsible drone flying is crucial to the future of the drone industry.

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Drone pilot Reuben Burciaga was fined $20,000 by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after his fly-away DJI Phantom 3 drone landed right next to an active runway at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. The drone incident took place in June of 2018 when Burciaga wanted to take an aerial photo of a Ferris wheel. Early on during the flight, he lost control of the DJI Phantom 3. The drone then slowly drifted for more than two miles towards the airport before landing right next to an active runway. The FAA issued the ‘careless and reckless” drone pilot a fine of $14,700 that increased to around $20,000 after Burciaga failed to pay or appeal on time. We have included the original video of the drone flight that was uploaded by Burciaga below.

Updated with the original flight logs of the DJI Phantom 3. You can download them here.

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Your Skydio 2 is almost ready to ship! Ah… What a nice way to start the weekend! I (and many other lucky drone enthusiasts) just received an email from Skydio informing us that the first batch of Skydio 2 drones is being prepared to ship out. We’re super excited to get our hands on the second generation of fully autonomous flying drones from the American drone manufacturer. Here’s the email that Skydio just sent out.

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Check out this DJI Mavic Mini tear-down and rebuild video if you have a minute and are interested in the inner workings of DJI’s latest drone. I think it’s fascinating to see how they put this lightweight drone together and were somehow able to keep it below 250 grams.

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The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to shoot down drones near airports, as we saw in our story from earlier today, to “mitigate” the risk the unmanned aircraft pose to air traffic. The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Federal Air Marshal Service would operate a Defense Department counter-unmanned-aircraft system, according to new plans. Two Republican lawmakers, however, protested against the proposed “Concept of Operations.”

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We’re waiting for DJI to release their latest update for the number of people that have been rescued around the world with the help of drones. That number must be getting close to 300 hundred now. It was 279 during the DJI Airworks event that took place in October in Los Angeles. This story was shared by Romeo Durscher, DJI’s Senior Director of Public Safety Integration, and it is about an 84-year-old man who had been lost for more than 48 hours but luckily was found with help of a DJI Inspire 2 drone (DJI, Amazon). As the fall season in Estonia tends to get pretty cold, we are happy to report that the gentleman is safely back home now.

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We have seen a number of amazing drone light shows here in the US over the last couple of years. Mostly from companies like Intel and Verity Studios. But more recently it seems that the most advanced and animated drone light shows are happening in China. I came across this video earlier today and then I started searching some more and I was positively surprised with what I found. Check out some of these recent videos that show you what can be done with coordinated drone light shows. The figures and animations that are created in the night skies are simply amazing. Who needs fireworks anymore?

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You might have seen the videos on Youtube of people using drones when fishing off the beach. Well, the WSJ has an article about this relatively new phenomenon that is worth a read. They call it the fishing for the Modern Fisherman: Rod, Reel, a DJI Drone. I say, DJI drone because as you’ll see in the photos but also videos on Youtube, fishermen use the DJ Mavic, Phantom and Inspire to precision-drop their bait. All drones that you can buy directly from DJI or Amazon.

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FPV drones race BMW S1000RR motorcycles on Thunderhill Raceway in this amazing video. Sometimes you wonder whether these FPV drone videos can get much better. In my mind, combining action sports with aerial action cameras gets you the best of both worlds. The moving viewpoint that an FPV drone provides not only gets you close to the action, but creates the feeling that you are actually part of the action.

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More than 100 pilots lift off from Jim R. Miller Park during a two-day GEMA and FEMA drone training event, participating in exercises ranging from obstacle courses to barricaded gunmen scenarios.

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As we have seen in other cases, LiDAR-equipped drones are revealing secrets that have remained invisible to the naked eye. This time a drone with LiDAR reveals a German SS concentration camp from WWII. Old reconnaissance photos from the RAF had shown that during the war a prison camp had been present on Alderney in the Channel Islands, UK, but it took a drone to show where exactly the remains of the camp were located. Be sure to check out this video as well.

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The DJI Mavic Minis that were stuck in customs are moving again with some of the earliest deliveries scheduled for today. On social media, some people who had ordered the DJI Mavic Mini directly from DJI were getting somewhat nervous and were wondering whether the hold-up was related to somebody not paying their tariffs. Luckily those fears seem to have been alleviated now that we are seeing the first notifications of scheduled deliveries.
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Drones bring us some of the most amazing video footage. Just take a look at this drone video showing a grey whale casually swimming underneath a group of surfers at Doheny. And the crazy part is that hardly anybody seems to notice the massive creature.

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DJI announced today that the Chinese drone maker has been working on a new drone-to-phone Remote ID solution that uses WiFi. The new app was demonstrated with a DJI Mavic Air (DJI, Amazon) and a DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise drone at the International Civil Aviation Organization’s third annual Drone Enable conference in Montreal. In their statement, DJI says that with this simple app “anyone within radio range of the drone can receive that signal and learn the location, altitude, speed and direction of the drone, as well as an identification number for the drone and the location of the pilot.” the new drone-to-phone Remote ID app and firmware updates from DJI are not yet available for public use as this was merely a demonstration. The company is waiting for further direction from aviation regulators and final publication of the ASTM International standard.

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DJI Enterprise announced on twitter that a new DJI Pilot update will bring MSX support for the Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual to iOS users. The update will include other iOS 13+ performance improvements as well, although DJI Enterprise did not specify what those might be. In a second tweet, DJI said that the update has been submitted, and that they expect it to become available this Friday or Monday.

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In a press release today about a future firmware update, we’ve learned that Fujifilm is in talks with DJI to make the Fuji X-T3 camera and other Fuji cameras work with DJI drones. The press release does not say with which DJI drone specifically the X-T3 will work. Could it be the DJI Inspire 3 that we expect to be released next year? In addition to working with DJI drones, Fujifilm also announced that the X-T3 camera will work in a similar fashion with Zhiyun gimbals.

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