DJI unveils Phantom 4 drone with obstacle avoidance, new Apple partnership
Chinese drone maker DJI on Tuesday took the covers off its its latest camera drone, a $1,399 aerial photography platform that comes with a faster top speed, longer flight duration, and a new obstacle avoidance system to make piloting easier.
According to DJI, the "Obstacle Sensing System" uses two sensors on the drone's front fascia to detect objects in the flight path. If anything is found -- from 0.7 to 15 meters away -- the system will automatically reroute the drone to avoid it.
Top speed has been increased to 20 meters per second in "sport mode," up from 16 meters per second for the Phantom 3. Flight time is bumped to 28 minutes, and the camera now supports 1080p slow-motion video at 120 frames per second.
New apps are also in the offing, including one that lets pilots simply tap on a location and have the drone fly automatically to it. Another feature, which the company calls ActiveTrack, allows users to select an object in the camera's view that the Phantom 4 will then follow autonomously, using the obstacle sensors and DJI's existing vision positioning system.
The Phantom 4 will be available on Apple's online store later today, making its way to brick-and-mortar locations on March 15. It will be an Apple Store exclusive until March 23.
According to DJI, the "Obstacle Sensing System" uses two sensors on the drone's front fascia to detect objects in the flight path. If anything is found -- from 0.7 to 15 meters away -- the system will automatically reroute the drone to avoid it.
Top speed has been increased to 20 meters per second in "sport mode," up from 16 meters per second for the Phantom 3. Flight time is bumped to 28 minutes, and the camera now supports 1080p slow-motion video at 120 frames per second.
New apps are also in the offing, including one that lets pilots simply tap on a location and have the drone fly automatically to it. Another feature, which the company calls ActiveTrack, allows users to select an object in the camera's view that the Phantom 4 will then follow autonomously, using the obstacle sensors and DJI's existing vision positioning system.
The Phantom 4 will be available on Apple's online store later today, making its way to brick-and-mortar locations on March 15. It will be an Apple Store exclusive until March 23.
Comments
1 accident per 1.2 million driven miles -- how's your record?
I suppose it's too much to hope that they produce an add-on sensor kit for obstacle avoidance for the Phantom 3 series, but i do hope they'll add some of the new software-only features to the Phantom 3 in a future firmware update.
I'm surprised this Phantom 4 does not include a 4K camera (unless it actually does and was just not mentioned in this article.)
Care to elaborate on this? To me hydro lines connotes water lines and I can't imagine a drone wrecking itself on a water line. Hydro line sounds like a term not used in the USA.
The point is that a single GPS satellite failure (since there aren’t any redundancies anymore) will endanger anyone who uses these vehicles, and there will be no way for them to regain control (since they won’t even have manual controls). Never mind people who are now stranded somewhere because their vehicles wouldn’t start up.
If you're seriously telling me you have never, ever tapped/bumped/slightly nudged anything with your car in 1.2 million miles, then you should clearly be a professional racing driver.
Also, autonomous vehicles do not rely on GPS, because it's phenomenally inaccurate in most urban environments (or under trees, in tunnels...). The onboard computer stores high-resolution maps locally, and they are continuously scanning their surroundings with LiDAR and visual cameras to reconcile what they see with what they're supposed to see. Contrary to apparently popular belief, the people building these things aren't idiots.
Oh, I know they’re not solely reliant on it, but isn’t the LiDAR still notoriously inaccurate?
As for the local maps, fucking FINALLY. I understand that back in the day when storage was still expensive that a downlink was necessary, but we’re getting to the point now that storage is cheap enough that everything can be local and just updated as needed.
LiDAR in this context approaches sub-centimeter accuracy. They're collecting >1M points per ~1 second.
The second new autonomous feature, ActiveTrack, is even more impressive. Trace a circle around a subject you want to keep it in frame: a runner, race car, or mountain bike. The Phantom’s onboard computer builds a 3D model of that subject and then automatically tracks to keep it in frame. The pilot can use the remote to make fine-grained adjustments to the focus, framing or camera settings, or they can just sit back and let the drone do all the work.
I dont suppose the P4 uses the same batteries as the P3? 28 minutes flight time is really tempting. Does it use Lightbridge? Have the same 2km range as the P3A?
At the rate these things are progressing, I will have to wait another two years.