Ishveena Singh

DJI is rolling out a new firmware version for the Phantom 4 RTK drone today. This is the second firmware update for the tech giant’s most compact and accurate low-altitude mapping solution this year. Head below for details on what’s new and how to update the firmware on your drone.

Autel Robotics has released a new firmware update for its EVO Nano and EVO Lite series drones, and this one includes several new features and improvements. While some new capabilities such as Dynamic Track 2.1, 8-bit Log video, and HDR video are being made available for selected models, others features like SuperDownload would benefit all EVO Lite, Lite+, Nano, and Nano+ series drones.

Wingcopter, an eVTOL manufacturer and drone delivery service provider based out of Germany, has finally roped in ITOCHU, one of the largest general trading companies (sogo shosha) in Japan, as a strategic investor and authorized partner. Wingcopter first hinted at this partnership in December 2021, when it announced an investment from Drone Fund, a Japan-based venture capital firm dedicated exclusively to the drone technology ecosystem.

Treeswift, a Philadelphia-based startup that has spun out of the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Laboratory, has secured $4.8 million in seed funding to build a drone-based forest monitoring system.

Last weekend, one of Europe’s top consumer electronics chains, MediaMarkt, decided to stop the sales of DJI drones amid allegations that the Chinese company was supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine. While DJI promptly dismissed those claims as “utterly false” on social media Friday, the tech giant has now released a statement explaining that its business partner was forced to remove DJI products from its shelves for security reasons as it had become a target of online attacks.

Like other tech companies, DJI also gets its products into the hands of “real users” before they are launched officially. One such beta tester for the newly announced Matrice 30 enterprise drone was the Weber County Search and Rescue – a volunteer organization assigned to assist the Weber County Sheriff’s Office in the state of Utah. Incredibly enough, the SAR team was able to witness the lifesaving capabilities of the DJI M30 drone firsthand when a snowboarder became stranded in North Fork mountain valley land.

Skydio’s autonomous drones, coupled with the company’s very capable Skydio 3D Scan software, can carry out complicated asset inspections with robotic precision, without any human intervention. And now, to improve this inspection process even further, Skydio is joining forces with Texas-based Optelos visual data management and AI analysis platform.

Amazon’s drone delivery program is again under the scanner with a new Business Insider report highlighting how an experimental Prime Air drone set several acres of a wheat farm ablaze when it crashed in eastern Oregon during a test flight last summer.

Michael Bay’s latest movie, Ambulance, will hit the theaters on April 8. Ahead of the release, a new behind-the-scenes video has dropped this week, showing how the director used FPV drones to pull off some absolutely spectacular shots in the pulse-pounding heist thriller.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has become the first air transport safety regulator in the world to offer technical design guidance to urban planners and eVTOL manufacturers looking to build drone taxi vertiports across Europe.

Ukraine is using drones as vital tools in its defense against the invading Russian forces. Even children understand that. This is why kids are now stepping forward to donate their prized quadcopters to the Ukrainian army.

DJI Mic, which was announced way back in October 2021 alongside the Action 2 camera with a shipping date set for January 2022, will not hit the shelves in the US until April.

A UK consortium has revealed its blueprint to build the world’s largest and longest “drone superhighway,” connecting towns and cities across the nation. The 165-mile (265 km) Project Skyway is being hailed as “the most ambitious transport project proposed for the UK since the advent of the railway network in the 18th century.”

Drone reality capture platform SkyeBrowse realized years ago its Android app was a mess. So, they scrapped it. But now, the New Jersey startup says it’s got a massive app design overhaul in the works – because not all users who want to convert their DJI drone video into a high-resolution 3D model at the speed of coffee use iOS devices.

SkyPixel, one of the world’s most popular aerial photography communities established by tech giant DJI, has announced the winners of its annual drone imaging contest. And the photos selected by the jury provide a truly incredible view of our world from above.

Draganfly says it is readying critical lifesaving drones for deployment with Revived Soldiers Ukraine (RSU), a non-profit organization focusing on medical response and rehabilitation of injured troops in Ukraine. While 10 medical drone delivery platforms and search and rescue drones will be dispatched by the Canada-based UAV manufacturer immediately, the initial order size can go up to 200 units, the company says. In addition, Draganfly will be donating three drone systems to RSU.

Terra Drone Corporation, a drone and urban air mobility (UAM) technology company headquartered in Japan, announced today it has scooped up a cool $70 million in Series B funding. The company, which was ranked as the “top drone service provider in the world” by market research firm Drone Industry Insights in 2019 and 2020, is now looking at establishing a US office and pushing out its uncrewed traffic management (UTM) offerings to the global market.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Israel (CAAI) says it will allow drone-in-a-box solutions provider Percepto to operate its drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) at three industrial sites in the country, including one which is owned by national water company Mekorot.

Yesterday’s launch of the DJI Matrice 30 enterprise drone was accompanied by the unveiling of the DJI Dock – a new autonomous docking and recharging station designed to fully automate flights with DJI M30 drones. It’s a great product with the potential to transform remote infrastructure inspection, site monitoring, and engineering supervision through unattended, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations. But DJI could struggle to find a market for it, former high-profile employees of the company say.

Aerorozvidka, a dedicated drone unit within the Ukrainian army, is leveraging Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system to hunt and attack the Russian forces “as they sleep.”

DJI has just finished its latest “For Everyday Heroes” event, where it introduced the new M30 product line ecosystem: an enterprise drone that can fit into a backpack, a multi-drone fleet management software, and an autonomous docking and recharging station. But alongside these, DJI has also unveiled a new sensor, Zenmuse H20N, designed especially for its flagship enterprise drone, the DJI M300 RTK.