AppleInsider Staff
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.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
17 Comments
"...a new obstacle avoidance system..." LOL... and we all now know Google's smart car reversing at a snail's pace couldn't even avoid a huge bus!
An obstacle avoidance system on my phantom 3 could have saved me $500! (Stupid hydro lines!)
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.)