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DJI Unveils the Mavic Pro, a Foldable and Ultra-Portable Camera Drone (petapixel.com)
It didn't take long for DJI to respond to GoPro's voice-controlled Karma drone. Today, the company has unveiled the Mavic Pro, an ultra-portable drone that can fold up into roughly the "size of a standard water bottle," DJI says. Of course, it also features a high-resolution camera and several autonomous software tricks. PetaPixel reports: Despite its petite form factor, the drone packs a punch: there's a 4K camera on the front, a visual navigation system, a 4.3-mile (7km) range, and a 27-minute flight time. By comparison, the Karma has a range of 0.62 miles (1km) and a flight time of 20 minutes. The Mavic Pro can be operated with a remote controller for long-range uses, or simply with your smartphone if you're not planning to fly it far. For the latter, the drone can go from folded up to in flight in less than a minute. In the Mavic Pro is a new FlightAutonomy system, which uses 5 cameras, GPS and GLONASS navigation, 2 ultrasonic rangefinders, redundant sensors, and 24 computing cores to serve as the drone's "brain and nervous system." Using FlightAutonomy, the Mavic Pro can follow positions and routes while avoiding obstacles at 22mph (36kph), allowing you to create advanced flights with minimal input and flying skills. What's more, the drone can even be controlled with your physical gestures, making it easy to shoot an aerial selfie if you so desire. A new compact remote controller has been designed for the Mavic Pro, and it features an LCD screen with essential data, dedicated buttons (e.g. Return-to-Home, Intelligent Flight pause), and a OcuSync video link system that provides live view at 1080p resolution. DJI is also announcing DJI Goggles to go along with the Mavic Pro. Wearing the goggles allows you to fly the drone with an immersive 85-degree view in full 1080p, viewing the world through the eyes of the drone. The DJI Mavic Pro will be available starting October 15th, 2016, with a price tag of $749 for just the drone and $999 with a remote controller bundled in. The DJI Mavic introduction video can be viewed here.
Once. Most just don't work so well after that.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
This is just so sick, twisted and demented. It is a shame to see this. It really upsets me. Who would do this? This looks like it took forever to write.
I think Slashdot would be raking in more of that sweet advertising revenue if it posted these ads at the same time as the rest of the internet, instead of a day or two later.
'Can fold up into roughly the "size of a standard water bottle," DJI says.' For the benefit of us rich people who have running water in their houses, what is the size of a standard water bottle in (A) inches, (B) centimeters, (C) beer bottles, (D) Libraries of Congress, (E), football fields, (F) car analogies, or (G) Cowboy Neil? You know. Standard measurements.
Wake me up when they manage to achieve 1-2 hours of flight time.
More shotgun targets... says a man in Kentucky.
That Karma drone from GoPro is dead on arrival then. Karma is small, and has a camera that can be used with a handle on the ground. BUT it missed a lot of the collision avoidance and expert features like tracking objects visually.
Mavic is *smaller*, *cheaper*, has all the smarter modes and collision avoidance stuff. It's from the market leader, another plus. Flight time is longer for the Mavik, and flight distance is further I think. GoPro didn't talk about the range, so I assume its pretty crap. Oh and Mavik supports VR headsets.
That leaves the removable gimbal. You can unclip it on the Karma and attach it to a handle and use it on the ground. *BUT* since the Mavik is small enough to be carried in one hand, then its only a firmware upgrade for DJI to turn the folded drone into a hand held gimbal. Since you could simply use the drone as a handle its so small.
Incidentally, if you have an older Phantom 3, just buy the Litchi app, and it adds visual tracking and a bunch of other smart stuff to the drone, instead of upgrading. That's another thing, the DJI has both a little screen AND uses a smartphone, the GoPro uses its own system. But that means you can use your better faster smartphone and use third party software like Litchi to upgrade it.
These will soon be flying outside girls schools, public swimming pools, and shower-room windows all over the country!
Let none gainsay the geek!
Look who has not taken his pills this morning.
This is just so sick, twisted and demented. It is a shame to see this. It really upsets me. Who would do this? This looks like it took forever to write.
APK. He doesn't have a life. But he has invested a lot of time on Visual Basic and Windows XP - he's kind of proud of that.
OK it looks great, but that's a lot of dough for something the average Joe will probably smash within a week.
Or get shot out of the sky...
It'll impress me when it can follow me like a pet in WoW. Until then, I'd still need a friend to fly it for a third-person aerial view...
Although I'm only putting one camera on mine.
Friend of mine made some carbon folding 250 quad frames. I'm really down to just soldering motor leads, renumbering ESCdirect pins, and software setup. I've never done pixhawk before, and this is based around a minipx4...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'll keep on waiting for the fist-sized, ultrasound-enabled, electroshock-emitter, mosquitoes hunt-and-destroy, nocturnal-guardian drone. When it arrives, I'll have a couple dozens, please.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
A drone that does selfies eh?
Just when you though selfie sticks were annoying...
. . . .is what is the drone's top speed, measured in Furlongs per Fortnight ?? (grin)
The FCC and EC regulations about the power of a transmitter are the same for all. Hover, the range of DJI quads is much higher then usual. I flew DJI Phantom 3 Advanced up to 2.4 km away and back.
What do DJI OcuSync Transmission System or DJI Lightbridge mean exactly? And why do they provide a higher range?
Do these FCC and EC regulations make sense? Transmitter Power (EIRP) FCC - 26 dBm, CE - 20 dBm. Why cannot we use say 200 dBm and have a range of a hundred kilometers. Certainly for such long range it would be necessary to use a fixed-wing aircraft or a hybrid, Are these just bureaucratic arbitrary limitations as D.Trump talked about, - "layers upon layers of regulations..."?
That mode where it (Mavic) flies on the phone only, its probably shorter range Wifi. Better to get the remote. (Does it work with older remotes?)
The Litchi app already gave me VR support on the phone using Google glass, so that isn't a draw.
The visual tracking, = Litchi again, already got that.
So the big draw for me: tiny + collision avoidance.
I'll wait till I crash my Phantom3a before I buy it. But tempting. Very tempting, but so was the Phantom 4, and now I'm damn glad I waited.
I've had my Phantom 3 for quite a while with no major crashes. And the couple of minor ones might have been avoided with Mavic visual object detection improvements (i.e. I tried to do cool, smooth, close fly in shots on something and mis-judged the tail wind a little. Everyone was like slow motion, but I haven't even broken a prop yet)
We had a Phantom 3 turn off on us while flying over a tall tree (50ft tall). It whacked every limb on the way down. Bent one of the landing supports a little and put lots of dings on the props. Still flew fine though.
Our best guess was that the battery wasn't plugged in fully or something.
Who is APK? I keep hearing about APK
DJI is taking my money this Christmas, again!
This thing looks SWEET and my rather expensive Phantom 2.75, with ZenMuse gimbal, GoPro 4 Black, 5Ghz video downlink, and replacements due to activities, looks like something from the Jurassic period. The Mavic does more, better, faster, further, and for less money.
God Dammit!
Flight autonomy, in my mind, is the uploading of a series of GPS waypoints and then turn the drone loose. Completely autonomous. This capability is present and works as expected in drones such as those with ArduPilot flight controllers and others.
DJI states that preprogrammed flight is available for the Phantom and other DJI drones. But in reality, the drone is "tethered" to a tablet and the tablet controls the drone. If the drone loses its connection to the table, it goes into emergency return home mod.This is NOT autonomous flight, in my opinion.
According to FAA rules, the drone is supposed to remain in sight of the pilot and under the pilot's control at all times. This means that autonomous flight is not legal or is, at the very least, a very dark gray area.
The Mavic claims to have autonomous flight capability. Is this true autonomous flight, or is the Mavic's autonomous flight capability just more of the old GroundStation on a tablet switcheroo?