DJI Matrice 4T and RC2 plus enterprise DJI Matrice 4T and RC2 plus enterprise

Really interesting day out this week with Drone Pilot Academy getting demos of the new DJI Matrice 4 and the DJI Dock 2 (plus DJI Terra). A mix of seeing the enterprise versions of workflow I have been finding myself exploring with the consumer Mini 4 pro and some really interesting examples of what is possible with networked drones.

My main goal of attending had been to gather intel / ask questions about some potential multispectral work we have coming up this spring (ie DJI Mavic 3 multispectral). Was great to be able to chat to some of the DPA team (pretty much all ex RAF by the intros!) and other drone pilots attending the event who had some useful insights and experience. Next step will be to get some sample images to see how they might fit into our planned AI workflow.

Hadn’t done much research on the two main (new) platforms being demonstated - Matrice 4 and Dock 2. First up the Matrice 4 and RC 2 plus enterprise controller. Pretty amazing sensor payloads being shown and workflow around setting up waypoints / flight plans was really impressive. Can really see how security and search & rescue teams are using this platform. Highlights for me were: quality and stability of the camera when zoomed in, the applications of the laser range finder to “measure stuff” and the edge AI they seem to be opening up by allowing installation of own CV models through their SDK (although this was not demoed so felt like it was at a more emergent stage - but one to look up on the SDK info and also note the MQTT interfaces).

The Dock 2 was used to demo the Flight Hub 2 software - a “laptop control centre” for you drone operations. Ryan was sitting in the lecture theatre setting up a flight plan for DJI Matrice 3D in a Dock 2 sat outside the building.

Dock 2 open ready for take off

Screen shot of Flight Hub showing fly zone / no fly zone and to the right the camera view from the drone in the dock outside. After taking off Ryan shared a QR code so that we could also log in to a live feed of the flight (being broadcast via the DJI servers in China).

DJI Dock 2 sharing QR code linking through to video feed

Which resulted in this view on my phone.

DJI Dock 2 camera view from shared QR code

And live view from the hub in the room.

DJI dock 2 in flight remote view

And one more showing flight path and live view from the camera feed.

DJI Dock 2 live view from console

Finally returning back to base.

DJI Dock 2 returning to dock

Back in Dock.

Matrice 3D in dock

Great morning out the office and learned loads about the enterprise side of the DJI drones which I was less familiar with. More research to do on the software side (need to take a look at Terra and Flight Hub2) and depending on which route we take for the project later this year this reminds me how much implicit knowledge is embedded in this community so a one day course to kick start using a new drone is definitely worth the investment.

More photos on Flickr: Flickr Search