After some misadventures with my previous quadcopters, finally I got the chance to get hands on something more advanced, I’ll explain it soon, for now, I want to do a retrospective:
– I started not so long ago in 2015 when I bought a mini quadcopter, that was fun! I can fly indoor or outdoor, with a robust frame, for the size, that handle many crashes. The fun would last just for six minutes and I would like to “see” from the drone perspective, thats when it comes the next one.
– After some investigation, I found that the reference was already DJI with that time, but was way above my budget. So, I tried the Cheerson CX-20, one of many DJI clones. That experience was a disaster and a nightmare, ending up with a completely crashed frame after several failures in GPS mode. I was so bad that I quit this hobby for four years.
My attraction to aerial videography was still there but the drones on the market were too expensive or very low quality. That was when DJI launched the Mavic Mini, at the end of 2019, a drone for less than $400 with so many nice features, the more important: camera with three-axis gimbal and features a 12MP sensor capable of 2.7K video at 30 FPS.
The Mavic Mini was disruptive in the drone market were professional quality video-photography by cutting the price and weight and make it the hobby quite more popular than before. This drone comes only with bottom proximity sensors, mainly for landing, this is something to take care when use the Return To Home function and any quickshot automation, like circle or eclipse… it was the last one that was fatal to my mavic mini, make it disapeer misteoly when crashed against a tree, the full dramatic event described here.
Then come the DJI Mavic Air 2 on April 27, 2020. Air 2 has a 1/2 inch CMOS camera, 34 min flight time per battery, can travel up to 68.4 km/h. The remote controller of Air 2 features a new design of the Mavic family.
DJI’s standard controller mounts a cellphone at the bottom, forcing you to look down while watching the screen. This resembles the mounting on the controller for the Anafi, a Mavic Air competitor made by DJI’s French rival, Parrot.[19] The Mavic Air 2 uses OcuSync 2.0, a dedicated radio system that runs in the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz ranges (the system works in single and dual-band mode, 5.8 GHz is not supported in all regions). This promises less interference from ambient Wi-Fi networks. It also offers a better range of up to 10 kilometers.[20] In term of filming, Air 2 supports RAW format, 48MP mode, HDR video, and 240fps slow-motion mode.
The major features that come with it are the Active-Track and APAS:
Active-Track 3.0 and APAS 3.0
DJI active track system uses Vision Positioning System (VPS), this system that gives the drone its ability to see consists of two front-facing and two downward-looking optical sensors, coupled with two dedicated image processors.
The system extracts 3D information from the digital images captured by its sensors through stereo vision, or stereopsis as it is called when the human brain does it, comparing the information about a scene from two vantage points and using the difference in position for each object in the two 2D images to triangulate their real-world locations.
Simultaneously the Drone uses a combination of computer vision, deep learning algorithms to detect obstacles and define paths to avoid it using the so-called Advanced Pilot Assistance System (APAS) feature.
Here is a video to what this technology can do, leave your comments and tell what do you think how this systems can be used in the future, in the video the drone is doing auto-pilot, I was just supervising to abort the Active Track mode if need:
Hope you like it, stay in touch and stay healthy!
