DJI Matrice 200 powerline inspections

As the sun sets on the consumer drone industry, well hovers just before setting in a plateau sort of a way. Oh, what a terrible analogy. DJI have released a video of one of the new Matrice 200 system doing what it was designed for, powerline inspections.

The Matrice is hardened against EMI (Electromagnetic interference) and with the correct camera fitted able to look up as well.

There is really only one other serious multirotor infrastructure inspection contender, the Falcon 8+ from Intel nee Asctec.

We are seeing 2017 as the year that the industry grows up. Serious people want to get reliable actionable data out of their flights. Pretty pictures alone don’t just cut it anymore.

DJI know that, they are pivoting to towards the big money.

Seeing this investment gap and the potential for improving our urban environments through smarter infrastructure maintenance and construction, DJI has applied its drone technology to address industry needs. The Matrice 200 Series, a new line of enterprise drones, was built from the ground up to assist in critical infrastructure and energy projects. To those unfamiliar with the application of drone technology, it centers around capturing georeferenced data from a wide range of sensors which not only drive efficiency gains in current methods, but also enable the development of new data intensive methodologies.

Furthermore, many inspections require engineers to scale tall structures. Such methods are not only time consuming due to the necessary safety preparations, but also inherently dangerous. Existing practices must leverage the opportunity drone technology affords and put workers at risk only when all other options have been exhausted.