Designed To Operate Nominally In The Harsh Flight Environments Characteristic Of Commercial And Rescue Operations

Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies Ltd.—more widely known as Da Jiang Innovations, or simply DJI—is a Chinese state-backed designer and manufacturer of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). DJI drones are widely used in the music, television, and film industries. In 2021 DJI models accounted for approximately 76-percent of consumer drone sales.

DJI announced the launch of its Matrice 350 RTK (M350 RTK), a drone model of which the company states: “Whether used as a business tool or to save lives, the M350 RTK is an upgraded flagship drone platform that is more adaptable, safer, and efficient for any aerial operation in public-safety, energy, mapping, infrastructure, or forestry, to name a few.”

DJI senior director of corporate strategy Christina Zhang stated: “It’s great to see how commercial drone pilots around the world use DJI platforms to carry out their operations with increased safety and more effectively than using traditional technology. The new capabilities offered by the advanced technology of the M350 RTK enables operators to push these boundaries even further.”

Featuring a 55-minute maximum flight-time and a payload of 5.95-pounds, the M350 RTK affords operators ample time and capacity to undertake demanding missions. The model’s new DJI O3 Enterprise Transmission features triple-channel, 1080p HD live-feeds and a maximum transmission distance of 12.4-miles. The system makes use of a four-antenna transceiver system capable of determining and defaulting transmission functions to the two optimal antennas while receiving signals via all four antennas. The described architecture is highly-resistant to interference and significantly improves transmission signal stability.

As the M350 RTK is designed to operate nominally in the harsh flight environments characteristic of commercial and rescue operations, the drone’s IP rating has been improved from IP45 to IP55.

IP—or Ingress Protection—rating is a laboratory-certified means by which to gauge the robustness of electronic equipment and the enclosures in which such equipment is contained. The metric quantifies the degree to which an electronic device’s critical components are safeguarded against the intrusion of debris and water, as well as accidental contact with potentially-damaging external objects, substances, or forces—such as structures, trees, and operators’ fingers. Developed by the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), the internationally recognized rating system is utilized extensively in Europe and Asia.

The IP rating standard seeks to provide consumers information of greater specificity than vagaries the likes of waterproof. The IP rating consists of two digits, each representing defined environmental hazards of influences. The first digit signifies protection against the ingress of solid objects; the second digit evinces protection against the ingress of liquids. The higher the value of each digit, the greater the overall degree of protection. The digit 0 (zero) denotes no degree of protection. Ergo, a product rated IP45 would be better protected against environmental factors than a similar product rated IP31. 

The M350 RTK’s First-Person View (FPV) camera has been enhanced to provide better navigation for safer night-flight operations. The model also features a new arm-lock detection function which helps users avoid the hazards of unlocked arm sleeves.

The M350 RTK’s six-directional binocular vision system and infrared sensing system afford pilots hexadirectional awareness, positioning, and obstacle-sensing capabilities—thereby providing comprehensive inflight collision protection. An even higher level of safety is attainably by dint of an optional Circular Scanning Millimeter-Wave (CSM) Radar—a bolt-on object detection system by which the M350 RTK may be kept safely clear of hard-to-see hazards such as wires and branches. To promote further operator confidence, the M350 RTK’s flight and sensor systems incorporate multi-layered redundancy.

The M350 RTK offers users a number of intelligent features such as Waypoint, Mapping, Oblique, Linear Flight, Terrain Follow, Smart Oblique, Pin-Point, Live Mission Recording, and AI Spot-Check.

To better fulfill commercial and search-and-rescue missions, the M350-RTK supports a variety of third-party payloads such as gas detectors, loudspeakers, multispectral sensors, and computing modules.

To access data transfer, live stream, and flight route distribution functions, the M350 RTK may be directly integrated with third-party cloud platforms via the DJI Pilot 2 app.

FMI: www.dji.com