By associate editor Elliot Smith:
DJI have announced an intriguing new drone that is aimed at the industrial market – the Matrice 100. Billed as a ‘Quadcopter for developers,’ it can carry custom payloads, has a lighter airframe and an increased flight time of up to 40 minutes when fitted with an extra battery.
DJI’s SDK will allow you to program behaviours into the Matrice so you will be able to customise both the hardware and software to your liking.
They are also offering an off-the-shelf guidance module called, er, Guidance. This uses a combination of cameras, ultrasonic sensors and computer vision algorithms to map the drone’s surroundings and, in combination with a DJI flight controller, avoid collisions. Guidance doesn’t need GPS to sense a drone’s position meaning that it will be easier to fly indoors or other places where there isn’t a good GPS signal.
The resulting UAVs don’t look as sleek as the models you can buy from stock, but that’s not really the point: these are flexible, hackable, customisable aircraft that will be able to get pretty much anything you like in the air (so long as it doesn’t weight more than 2.2lbs, of course).
The Matrice 100 will be priced at £2,799 and Guidance will cost £899 – not impulse purchases by any means, but a good deal cheaper than running a helicopter. Pre-orders are open on the DJI website now, with delivery slated for around four weeks’ time.
