Drone News & Articles

These shots show how social distancing can bring families together.

After the coronavirus pandemic forced a Lithuanian wedding photographer out of a job, he decided to use his talents to capture heartwarming drone portraits of families bonding during lockdown. The Eastern European nation recently announced that it would be under quarantine until April 13, LRT reports.

“I started this project to give people a chance to brighten their day in this negative corona information environment,” Adas Vasiliauskas tells Cover Images photo agency. He added that he wanted to illustrate how families keep themselves entertained while hunkered down for an extended period of time.

The result is a moving collection of long-distance snaps depicting families engaged in everything from sunbathing on terraces to coronavirus-inspired cosplay, which can be viewed on his website, tasfotografas.lt. Indeed, despite prompting an uptick in divorce rates and family tension, the COVID-19 quarantines have also inspired a host of creative virus-proof pursuits, like the New York parents who are penning hilarious “Frozen” song parodies for their kids.

The enterprising photog says that that the pictorial pursuit started humbly with a few shots of friends. However, the project took flight after “the photos gained a lot of likes.”

But his endeavor wasn’t without obstacles. “At first I thought of offering to shoot people with a telephoto lens,” says Vasiliauskas, who says he’s shot more than 250 weddings all over the globe during his 15-year career. “Then I remembered I use a drone in my wedding photography and the drone is a totally zero-human-contact way to capture things.”

Along with demonstrating that being holed up inside can be fun, the pic wizard also wanted to remind everybody to keep their social distance.

Vasiliauskas isn’t the first to employ aerial automatons during the global COVID-19 scourge. Quarantiners have memorably used drones to record once-bustling neighborhoods that have been turned into ghost towns due to the coronavirus. In a more unorthodox incident, a heartsick Brooklynite used an unmanned wingman to hit on a gal while in self-isolation. And a Cyprus man even used a drone to take his dog for a walk.

French photographer Florian Ledoux has won the inaugural Nature TTL Photographer of the Year award for an incredible drone shot featuring crabeater seals resting on a floating chunk of ice. Ledoux’s impeccably composed shot beat 7,000 entries from over 100 countries.

The new photography competition is run by Nature TTL, a novel resource founded by wildlife photographer Will Nichols with the goal of offering educational tutorials and features to assist amateur and professional nature photographers. Accompanying Ledoux’s winning image is an interview with the photographer explaining his process, along with advice for amateur drone photographers on how to approach wildlife with this technology.

“It is very important to be aware and ethical with your approach when using drones with wildlife,” says Ledoux. “Pay attention to the behavior of the animal and don’t spook it. You should approach drone photography in the same way that you would approach wildlife photography on the ground. Slow movements and approaching from very high up will reduce the risk of disturbance. When up very high I start by taking wide shots, slowly descending and stopping the drone at different heights to ensure the animals are not frightened.”

The competition spans three main categories: Landscape, Wildlife and Macro. Additional prizes are offered to photographers under 16 and a People’s Choice pick.

Robert Ferguson’s fascinating shot of a great white pelican struggling to swallow a fish won the People’s Choice award. As Ferguson describes, the image captures a bird struggling to eat a non-native fish that had hooked itself onto the pelican’s beak.

“I had set up my camera to take some portraits and watch their behavior, and noticed one particular bird that had caught one of the big fish from the pond,” Ferguson explains. “I watched, intrigued, as the bird swam in circles, dipping his bill, taking water, then raising his beak to attempt to swallow his large prey. But every time the fish extended its sharp spines on its fins – you can see it hooked on the beak here – and lodged itself firmly. This went on for over 20 minutes, with no sign of either party tiring.”

Other highlights from this impressive new photo contest include a beautiful drone shot showing a flock of sheep seeking shelter from the sun in an afternoon shadow, a stunning snap of a startled owl spooked by a swooping jackdaw, and a frightening image of a camouflaged spider in Australia’s tropical north.

Move over dogs – drones are a farmer’s new best friend! In just a few years there’s been a huge rise in the use of drones in agriculture. Their popularity is set to soar globally as countries grant operators permission to also apply crop protection products.

It makes sense to use drones for spray applications – they can operate over sodden fields and tall crops where no machine could normally move, fly quickly to exact locations to treat target areas precisely, as well as be pre-programmed to navigate their own way around.

Recent equipment introductions, and regulation changes in particular, look likely to see aerial applications by UAVs to increase substantially and quickly around the globe.

Drone sales in the USA to rise by a third

In the USA sales are set to rise by a third in a year – probably thanks to new regulations that now permit drone applications. And, with John Deere showing its developments at the Agritechnica Show in 2019, it looks like drone spraying is moving into the mainstream.

In countries with advanced agriculture, aerial spraying by drone completes the precision farming virtuous circle. This begins with remote crop scouting targeting treatment areas that are followed by applications on a pre-programmed route. And this, can not only be achieved remotely, but also truly autonomously.

Massive benefits for farmers in countries with developing agriculture

Drone spray applications also provide massive benefits for farmers in countries with developing agriculture. Indeed, in countries like China and India, they have essentially enabled farmers to leap from hand-held applicators, skipping vehicle-mounted boomed machines, and going straight to drones. At the same time drones improve application timeliness, reduce the need for skilled labour and cut hand-held sprayer operators’ exposure to harmful pesticides.

Reducing overuse

Drones are playing a major role in the Chinese government’s aims to use advanced technology to modernise its agricultural production and help combat the overuse of chemicals in the country. A report by the FAO and World Bank shows the volume of pesticides it uses is three times more than the USA per hectare of land.

Lack of regulations slowing deployment of spraying drones

Elsewhere around the world the lack of regulations is slowing the wider deployment of spraying drones on farms. This is either due to rules not keeping up with technology or simple outright bans on all aerial applications – as in the whole of the EU. While many countries are catching up by including drone use in civil aviation law, the difficulty is compliance with spraying regulations. In many places chemical applications are tightly controlled and in most circumstances this will require changes to products’ registered use.

Drone applications will also have to comply with local regulations. For example, in the Netherlands all applications can only be made with 75% drift reducing nozzles or technology. Currently, in countries with advanced agriculture, ground-based application equipment developments and product use restrictions are focused squarely on reducing drift and increasing accuracy.

Drone applications will also have to comply with local regulations. For example, in the Netherlands all applications can only be made with 75% drift reducing nozzles or technology. Currently, in countries with advanced agriculture, ground-based application equipment developments and product use restrictions are focused squarely on reducing drift and increasing accuracy.

The only way to provide sufficient coverage with very low volumes is to use nozzles that produce finer droplets. “ASABE fine to very fine droplets will have problematic effects on off-target movement and evaporation. These fine droplets are also more prone to the aerodynamic eccentricities of aircraft,” he adds.

Failure to control movement of a spray is, and should be, a problem

Entering these finer sprays into the models to assess drift from applications from conventional, manned aircraft results in buffer zones that are hundreds of times wider. “Failure to control movement of a spray is, and should be, a problem,” he adds.

Research ongoing

While research into drone spraying is progressing, most of this relates to coverage and deposition as well as spraying speeds and heights. The USDA is, however, currently conducting trials looking at drift. Wolf is part of a working group in Canada researching drone applications, including drift analysis. While drones employ the latest, highest technology for flying, control and autonomous operation, some of the application technology is quite basic, particularly compared with modern vehicle-based boom sprayers. Drone manufacturers are addressing these issues with more sophisticated technology, such as rotary atomising nozzles, electro-static systems and other developments.

BatDrone

Drone technology just got a step closer to becoming fully self-navigating: Taking a page out of a bat’s playbook, engineers developed a rig that lets drones chart out their surroundings using echolocation.

Purdue University engineers equipped a drone with a speaker and an array of four microphones and let it loose in a series of rooms, according to research published last month in the SIAM Journal on Applied Algebra and Geometry. And while self-navigating drones are neat, the engineers said in a press release their work could lead to better car backup cameras or help people with disabilities navigate.

Scream Maps

Bats echolocate by basically screaming into the air . They detect how long it takes the sound waves to return and whether they were perturbed along the way, which would suggest food or an obstacle nearby.

The drone works in much the same way. By measuring how long it took the sound waves to bounce around and return to each microphone, the drone was able to accurately map out the room’s walls and avoid collisions.

World Building

By cross-checking each microphone’s readings against the others, the drone was able to successfully rule out false positives — “ghost walls” — as it flew around.

For now, the four-microphone setup is good for mapping out rooms. The next step would be to scale up the microphone array to detect smaller obstacles. Or, since a car can’t fly around the room to see what’s behind it, to map out its surroundings without needing to move.

Wildlife warriors are using thermal drone technology to locate and rescue injured or stranded koalas on Kangaroo Island in the aftermath of the devastating bushfires.

Aerial cinematographer Douglas Thron, who is based in California, is leading the rescue mission after joining a team of wildlife carers on the bushfire ravaged island.

Using an infrared-equipped drone, rescuers are able to locate the animals more efficiently rather than carrying out the mission on foot.

Speaking to 10 daily, Tanya Jones, who has been a wildlife carer for 20 years and founded a shelter in Alice Springs, described the drone as "game changing" technology.

"The koalas are starving. They have nothing to eat, no food, water or resources left," she said.

"Without us, they are going to die. It's as simple as that."

Thorn launched a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for supplies and airfares required to carry out the emergency rescue mission.

He said he spent a number of months rescuing animals in the Bahamas using drone tech before his expertise was desperately required here in Australia.

"My use of this technology has saved so many animals in Bahamas after the hurricane, in California after the fires, and now the endangered animals of Australia," he said.

"Australia’s wildlife urgently needs to be rescued after these disastrous fires."

Experts believe as few as 5,000 koalas remain on Kangaroo Island after bushfires ripped through almost half of the landmass, decimating infrastructure, wildlife, and terrain.

Figures suggest there were as many as 50,000 to 60,000 before the inferno.

The technology works by picking up heat signals from wildlife such as koalas, which can be hard to spot among the trees and vegetation.

Before Thorn arrived, Jones said the team was doing everything on foot.

Since then they've been able to rescue about 20 koalas within the last two weeks alone but Jones believes there are hundreds more that need salvaging.

"We were in Victoria and then we were asked to go to Kangaroo Island because they desperately needed our help," she explained.

Once spotted, the group uses a 'soft capture enclosure' which involves erecting a tarp or fabric circle around the base tree. Inside is a metal enclosure filled with gum leaves, designed to lure the koalas down.

Once trapped they are transported to the local wildlife hospital.

"The trees are far too dangerous for us to climb so we started using these methods. The trees might be 'un-climbable' but the koalas have to come down at some stage," Jones said.

Despite the obvious mammoth task ahead, Jones is optimistic and said her job is easy, simply catch the koalas and the wildlife hospital will do the rest.

"[The wildlife hospital] is like a well-oiled machine," she added.

Currently, the group only has one drone on Kangaroo Island but another American animal rescuer and drone specialist, Gabe Ligon, is flying a second device over in the coming weeks which will speed up the rescue mission.

It's not just koalas that can be spotted using these devices.

Rescue missions extend to all sorts of wildlife such as kangaroos. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as investing in more drones.

"You need to specialise with these drones and Douglas is one of the best in the world," Jones said.

The drone has the ability to fly just under 2km's and has so far helped rescuers spot koalas, wombats, and wallabies across Kangaroo Valley.

In an Instagram post, Thron said: "It works amazingly well (but) there are still so many animals to save out there."

A video of a drone lighting show promoting the reinvention of Motorola’s Razr flip phone in the Middle East and Africa, has attracted over 200,000 views through Motorola’s social media channels. The 120-drone show includes an animation of the Razr flip phone opening, closing and rotating in the sky.

Teams from AO Drones and AO Creative, part of entertainment lighting company AO Technology, worked with Motorola and digital marketing agency netizency, to design the visual content, including animated logos and brand names.

AO’s founder and executive producer, Marco Niedermeier said: “From the beginning we asked, what was the intention? It was to create great content for social media and get maximum shares and engagement. So we looked after the whole production – the drone show, the film – but without an invited audience on site.”

Specially developed for entertainment productions, the AO Drones fleet uses an advanced control platform to deliver flexible, efficient and safe shows. The drones’ speed – up to 10 metres per second – and accuracy mean that their visible time in the air is optimised, making shows a viable option for event production everywhere.

Adding a further dimension to the video, camera drones provided striking fly-through footage, taking the viewer up and into the drone formation, even passing directly through the Motorola logo. “It’s not just filming a flat logo in the sky,” says Niedermeier. “This really is three-dimensional, dynamic show content.”

Vinayak Shenoy, head of marketing in the Middle East and Africa for Motorola’s parent company Lenovo, said: “We felt that this drone show symbolises what this product is all about – a great blend of technology and art. . . The beauty of 120 drones rising in the air altogether, the whirring of the drones and the beautiful formations is something I’m going to remember for a very long time.”

Canberra could welcome in 2021 with a futuristic twist with a drone light show one of the options considered as a fireworks alternative.

Following the cancellation of this year's New Year's Eve pyrotechnics performance, the ACT government will join others around the world looking towards environmentally safer options.

Fitted with LED lights, the displays usually include hundreds or even thousands of tiny drones flown in formation to create images. The reusable technology does not produce the same air and noise pollution as fireworks displays.

A government spokesperson said Events ACT will continue to explore alternate options to fireworks - including drones - and will provide advice to the Chief Minister and the Minister for Arts, Creative Industries and Cultural Events in due course.

"Off the back of the recent experience with our summer events, Events ACT is exploring options for alternatives to fireworks, however no decision has been made at this time regarding NYE 2020 celebrations," the spokesperson said.

Events ACT was in the midst of a busy event season this week with the Enlighten Festival due to commence next Friday.

The Canberra FM funded Skyfire fireworks event signalling the end of the festival on March 14 was scheduled to go ahead.

Sydney's iconic display could also be a thing of the past with the City of Sydney Council also canvassing the idea of a drone show.

Shows using about 500 drones had been reported to cost as little as $75,000, while the decision to go ahead with Sydney's recent fireworks display cost the council more than $6.5 million.

Since the first drone show in 2012, there has been a rapid intake of the fireworks alternative worldwide.

Lady Gaga kicked off the NFL Superbowl half-time show with 300 drones creating the US flag behind her and a year later, 1218 lightweight drones opened the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

Footage broadcast globally depicting a drone display welcoming 2020 in Shanghai was later revealed to have been recorded during a practice run on December 28.

The deployment of drones today has so far been limited to consumer markets. Yet that could soon be about to change thanks to advancements in cellular technologies, meaning we could soon see drones deployed increasingly across mission-critical and industry applications.

This could change everything. For example, cellular-connected drones could be deployed for automated inspection of critical infrastructure such as roads/highways, bridges, buildings, power stations, nuclear reactors, electrical grids, power dams, railways, pipelines and cell towers. Most of these inspection processes are currently done by humans, which makes them slow, costly and often dangerous.

Another use case, which could have a profound impact on our lives, is the deployment of drones in mission-critical healthcare applications.

Deploying drones in healthcare

A recent public safety drone trial conducted in partnership with Canada’s Renfrew County Paramedic Services was very serious. When someone experiences cardiac arrest, getting treatment fast is essential. The probability of survival declines by 10% with every minute that passes.

Reaching patients in time is hard enough in cities that have highways and hospitals within reach. Rural Renfrew County in Ontario, Canada covers over 2,800 square miles of densely forested, lightly populated, mostly rural terrain. Getting life-saving equipment and medical assistance quickly to its far-flung citizens is a real challenge.

To compensate for the terrain, Renfrew County’s authorities have long turned to technology. For example, the Renfrew Paramedic Service have been using drones in healthcare to deliver automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and medications to remote locations for a while, but those traditional drones were limited to line-of-sight control, guided by an on-site operator.

What if they could expand that distance, making emergency response faster and safer beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)?

What if, instead of a patient in distress (or worse), emergency medical service (EMS) paramedics could arrive at an emergency to find a patient in a more stable condition, because lifesaving equipment got to the scene while they were in transit?

A race for survival

In fall 2019, Ericsson was part of a groundbreaking trial in Renfrew that pitted EMS ambulances on the ground against drones equipped with automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

The technology partners for the trial included InDro Robotics which supplied the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and Cradlepoint which provided its NetCloud Service, including an on-board, ruggedized Internet of Things (IoT) router. 

Simulating realistic emergency calls, each team was to deliver a defibrillator to 20 remote spots where researchers from the University of Toronto and Ottawa Hospital were waiting. They would use the device to deliver four required shocks to a medical manikin.

These drones were different from Renfrew’s earlier UAVs. Connected by Ericsson’s LTE advanced cellular network, the drones travelled to specific GPS locations across a 16km (about 10 miles) radius—far beyond line of sight. In fact, instead of being in the field holding remote controls as in the past, the pilots were stationed 3,000 miles away in Vancouver.

It makes me proud that Ericsson played a role in bringing this landmark use case to life. The Renfrew County drone trial is just one way of showing how ICT can accelerate the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

The winner? The patient.

The results of the trial were extremely encouraging. During each test run, the drone arrived at least seven to fifteen minutes before the paramedic vehicles. Translated to an actual cardiac arrest, the extra time provided by the drones would greatly improve the patient’s chances for survival in rural areas throughout Canada and the world.

Flying further and doing more through LTE

In a very critical way, 4G LTE was the enabling technology in the trial. Previous drone trials relied on non-cellular technology, which limits them to trips shorter than five miles. By utilizing the LTE cellular network already in place, the drones in the trial were able to reach patients as far as 80 miles (128 kilometers) away.

When ultimately deployed, drones would be able to fly wherever there is cellular service, potentially covering distances as far as 80 miles away to deliver naloxone kits, EpiPens, emergency medications, defibrillator machines and even personal floating devices (PFD) in different emergency response situations.

But that’s not all. The speed, bandwidth and reliability of the LTE cellular network enables the drones to share images and video with operators and employ artificial intelligence (AI) to manage key functions such as collision avoidance. And the pilots could work safely from a facility anywhere in the world, with many resources at hand that would be unavailable out in the field.

5G will unlock amazing potential for good

Moving to cellular was a big leap because a drone is not just about transporting physical items. It’s also a vehicle for data acquisition. As we move towards 5G cellular, we’ll have a much larger pipe with much lower latency for collecting, computing and acting on more data, faster.

Using ultra-high-resolution video, high-resolution sensors (lidar, spectrum analysis, x-rays, etc.) with AI, machine-learning (ML) and analytics, we’ll be able to have drones in many complex missions.

The high-speed cellular data connection allows us to use the drone as a flying data acquisitions platform for numerous inspection applications employing different kinds of sensors that feed into AI/ML systems.

Drones equipped with advanced sensors can perform extremely accurate inspection, saving a digital record of every inspection. We could detect the smallest changes that indicate a dangerous problem and trigger preventative action early on. And we’ll be able to conduct these inspections much more frequently and at a much lower cost.

Instead of individual drones controlled by a pilot onsite, there will be groups of drones, operated by a pilot hundreds of miles away over the cellular connection, that communicate and collaborate with one another to complete a task. Based on the data the drones gather, AI/ML systems can provide real-time analysis of critical situations and help people make higher quality decisions to keep our critical infrastructure operating well—and us all safe.

Our manikins were saved. Who’s next?

Together with the dedicated leaders of Renfrew County, InDro Robotics and Cradlepoint, we showed that 4G LTE networks and drones can be used to advance life-saving services. But that’s just the beginning.

Suppose police could track an active shooter in real time or identify a terrorist threat? Or a farmer using cellular-driven drones could practice precision sustainable agriculture, identifying trees in distress and leveraging data to reduce the amount of pesticides or water used?

The Renfrew County’s public safety drone trial demonstrated how the imaginative use of technology—and the right partnerships—can accomplish a lot of good.

When you think of the DJI Mavic 2 series, you probably conjure a picture of hobbyist pilots using them to capture great aerial content. And you wouldn’t be wrong!

But these groundbreaking drones have also become a key tool for commercial missions, being deployed for survey work, on farms, and video marketing, among other jobs.

Tipping the scales at just over 900g, the Mavic 2 Pro and Zoom are lightweight, quick to get airborne, and thanks to their foldable design, they are easy to transport. Add to this their excellent image quality, 30-minute flight time, an array of smart features, and modest price tag compared to alternative enterprise drones, the Mavic 2 series has established itself as a firm favourite in the world of work.

Perhaps recognising how valuable the Mavic can be for professional use, DJI has since released the more targeted Mavic 2 Enterprise (M2E) range, with detachable accessories including a loudspeaker and bright spotlight, integrating the M2E Dual (M2ED) with a thermal sensor and the original M2E with a 2x optical zoom camera, and having password protection to keep sensitive data safe.

The Mavic 2 Enterprise series has been particularly beneficial for public safety missions, and in a lot of cases, these drones have become the perfect aircraft to back-up or supplement crews’ fleets of M200 Series – thanks to their small size and ability to deploy quickly.

Using The DJI Mavic 2 Zoom For Traffic Surveys

Epsom-based 360 TSL uses the DJI Mavic 2 Zoom to conduct traffic surveys.

The view from above provides a perfect picture of how intersections are working and helps to identify and assess the length of queues.

The drone captures this information quicker than alternative methods and also improves safety, reducing the need for staff on the ground to cross busy roads.

The drone benefits from 4x zoom, including a 2x optical zoom (24–48 mm); ideal for honing in on key areas from a distance.

Stacey Dix, from 360 TSL, said: “Using the Mavic 2 Zoom has really helped us as a company because it is able to count complicated junctions that would normally take a lot of staff and a lot of time to do. It also eliminates the safety concerns of staff on the ground being near to and having to cross busy main roads and motorways.”

Using a drone provides some key benefits for the clients of 360 TSL.

Stacey said: “For our clients, the footage shows how junctions really work in real life. Quite often, they just get data and figures which indicate how a junction should work, but in practice, this is often very different. Having footage shows the client exactly what is happening.

“Recently, a client requested footage of a motorway junction they will be developing and improving over the next few years. They want to film the junction before, during and after to showcase the improvement works.”

The view from above. Traffic survey conducted by the DJI Mavic 2 Zoom.

Using The DJI Mavic 2 Pro For Inspection and Marketing

The DJI Mavic 2 Pro has become the go-to tool for Hertfordshire-based drone services firm, The Drone Photo Company.

Pilot Gary Perlmutter uses the Mavic 2 Pro for a range of jobs, including roof inspections, real estate photography, golf-course marketing and weddings.

For him, his trusty Mavic is the perfect companion

He said: “The Mavic 2 Pro is easy to fly, meaning that I can concentrate on composing and capturing content, and the output from the camera is quality. The Mavic 2 Pro excels in both of these areas and nothing else I’ve owned or used has come close. It is also so easy to travel with being relatively lightweight and compact.

“Aerial photography has literally added a new perspective to what I am now able to offer my clients. When it comes to real estate photography, using a drone enables us to showcase your property to potential buyers in a unique way, like this video shows.

“Meanwhile, hole flyers are a great way to attract new members to your golf club and quality stills photography and 4k video can showcase a golf course in a way that stands out from the crowd.”

Gary bolsters his drone missions by using the DJI Smart Controller, describing it as superb for getting the Mavic in the air quickly, and praising its ultrabright screen and its professional look.

Using DJI Mavic 2 Drones For Agriculture

Drones in the Mavic 2 Series are also being deployed to benefit UK agriculture.

Jack Wrangham, Drone AG founder, said: “We use, and recommend the Mavic 2 drone systems for pretty much all of our work in the agriculture industry.

“The drones are small and lightweight which means they can easily make a home on the back seat of a farmer’s pickup, and batteries can be charged via the car charger. This makes them very user-friendly when they are needed for a quick field survey.

“Over the years that we have been using these systems, we have found them to be extremely reliable, and even when we’ve pushed them to the limits in windy conditions, they have performed very well.

“The collision-avoidance sensors are also a huge benefit, and in general the drones are hardy enough to cope well with being treated like another bit of farm kit, ie mud, dust and the odd rain shower.

“Add to that the Enterprise and Thermal options, and we have a drone system that is extremely flexible, powerful and easy to use – perfect for us and our customers.”

Drone AG isn’t the only agricultural company to be utilising the Mavic 2 range.

A quirky tale to hit the headlines last year was a farmer in New Zealand who was using the speaker on the Mavic 2 Enterprise to emit a pre-recorded dog bark to help move his livestock.

He was also utilising the drone for stock surveillance, especially during lambing and calving time and for inspecting farm gates, fences, water troughs and other farm assets.

Using the drone saved valuable time and resources for more productive operation.

Using The DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise For American Airlines Inspection

American Airlines, the world’s largest airline, has used the tiny Mavic 2 Enterprise to help conduct maintenance and visual inspections of huge planes.

The drone has proved useful – giving mechanics a view of the plane from above while allowing them to inspect from the ground. This increases safety, is less labour intensive and helps to access parts of the plane which are hard to reach.

Dave Caldwell, manager, aircraft maintenance at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, said: “The first time I saw a drone being used to inspect an aircraft, it opened my eyes to the possibilities of drones.”

Lorie Grabham, Lead Drone Integrator, added: “The idea of using drones for aircraft maintenance and inspections evolved over time. Looking at the technology, we realised there was potential to use it for visual inspections.

“Being able to use this technology and have the video and photos from the drones will have a lot of benefits over time; you can see the health of the aircraft and do a lot of analysis.”

Using The DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise For Public Safety

When it comes to public safety, the Mavic 2 Enterprise (M2E) series really flexes its muscles.

For instance, New York Fire Department – the second largest municipal fire department in the world – has a thriving drone fleet and Captain Michael Leo admits that the Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual (M2ED) is a firm favourite in their firefighting arsenal.

He said: “Drones help massively with situational awareness and the Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual is our main drone – I would say that we do 90% of our work with it.

“We have found it to be very reliable, fast to deploy, really easy to use, and the thermal is good enough for what we need.

“The thermal imaging tells us the temperature gradients and helps us to identify where the hotspots are, which allows us to deploy our resources in the right places, providing a faster response and helping us deploy the team on the ground as safely as possible.”

It isn’t just firefighters benefiting from Mavics. Police forces, such as Devon and Cornwall, are also deploying the Mavic 2 Enterprise series.

For the likes of Devon and Cornwall, the M2ED is the ideal drone for rapid operations and a perfect partner to the DJI M200 Series.

In an interview with DJI last year, Senior Drone Pilot of Devon & Cornwall Police, Tom Shainberg said: “The M2E is a great drone, it’s so quick to deploy and gives us eyes in the air when we need them.

“Due to the size of our force and the area we cover (nearly 5,000sq miles), our Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs) provide our spontaneous drone capability. They are out patrolling 24/7 and due to the amount of equipment they carry, space is at a premium. They’re not able to carry a bigger drone so the M2ED gives great balance between size/weight and its capabilities.

“Some incidents require getting a drone in the air as fast as possible, such as an active foot pursuit where time is of the essence so the M2ED really ticks the box in supporting that type of deployment."

“Our Armed Response vehicles provide a spontaneous capability and with the restrictions in the space they’ve got to carry things they’ve not been able to have a thermal capability until now. The M2ED gives them the option to deploy at night which has been a huge restriction for us and has now opened new doors.

“I have to say that the thermal camera on the M2ED is not as good as the XT camera on our M210 but the ability to have a drone that can be quickly deployed to search the area after a road-traffic collision or after a pursuit is a huge advantage. Any drone is only good if it’s there when you need it and the M2ED is doing that for us.

“We have two M210s and because of the area we cover it can often take a little a while to get it to where we need it, so the M2ED is filling the gap and gives us that initial tactic to get a thermal camera in the air very rapidly.”

The DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise (M2ED) with the beacon accessory, which helps pilots who are carrying out missions in low light or at night, and greatly improves flight safety.

Using DJI Mavic 2 Drones For Mountain Rescue

Mavic 2s are also being deployed by mountain rescue teams for vital situational awareness, finding missing people, and reaching inaccessible areas.

This drone footage was posted by the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team, following a 100m abseil retrieval of a couple of cragfast climbers.

This video was accompanied by a caption: ‘Drone footage by team member Spit using a Mavic 2 Zoom in quite windy conditions shows how effective the equipment is; a valuable tool to raise safety and efficiency in our work.’

Using The Mavic 2 For Overview Work

Terra Drone Europe is a leading provider of geographic data acquisition, industrial inspections, and high-end aerial imagery using drones.

The company takes its Mavic on jobs around the world and uses it for overview work and to capture stunning content.

An example of this was a project in Morocco when the team was conducting a detailed aerial survey and mapping job covering 80 km2 of the Western Sahara Desert. Terra Drone Europe utilised the quality camera on the Mavic to film the project.

Summary

The DJI Mavic 2 drones have become iconic, thanks to their lightweight and foldable frame, relatively low price point, quality cameras and smart and safe flight features.

For these reasons, the Mavic 2 series has established itself as a firm favourite with commercial users, as well as consumers.

There might be some enterprise jobs that are more suited to the powerful and versatile M200 range – thanks to its rugged airframe and ability to integrate top-class cameras, such as the XT2, Z30, X7, and the X5S – but there is certainly a place for Mavic 2 drones in professional missions, as demonstrated by the real-world examples listed in this article.

If you've decided that a DJI Mavic 2 would be beneficial to your work, why not get one at our online store and have it delivered to your doorstep? 

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found use in agriculture for decades, with unmanned helicopters spraying pesticides on rice fields in Japan back in the 1980s. Now, to have drones reach their full potential in farming, research is increasingly pushing toward beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations. Agriculture is a market second only to infrastructure in the global market for drone-powered solutions, according to a report from PriceWaterHouseCoopers in London. And, as the world population grows from 7 billion to an estimated 9 billion by 2050, agricultural consumption is predicted to increase by 69 percent. 

UAVs are positioned to play an important role in overcoming what the PwC report stated was the main obstacle in farming— gathering useful insights on crops and livestock scattered across large areas of land in a manner timely enough to intervene quickly when needed. Drones with hyperspectral, multispectral, thermal and even just very high-resolution regular cameras can help farmers monitor their water, fertilizer, insecticide and herbicide needs more closely than satellites can, more cheaply than manned aircraft do and more regularly than both. 

“As an ag pilot, I would wake up in the morning with, say, 10,000 acres to cover,” said Dennis Lott, CEO of drone consultancy firm UAS Solutions in Jackson, Mississippi, who collaborates on small UAS projects for agriculture at Mississippi State University. “That’s a tremendous area to work—I might only do 3,000 acres that day. That goes on for two to three months during the peak of the season. If drones can help collect data in real-time for the crop scouts—the agents that do field inspections for farmers—that makes them much more efficient at locating problems in the field.” 

The hope is that drones can help farmers quickly and cheaply analyze plant status, added Amelia Fox, an assistant clinical professor of plant and soil sciences at Mississippi State University. 

“We want the right doses at the right places and right times,” said Fox, who teaches agricultural flight technologies and is exploring how color and near-infrared sensors can help farmers analyze plant status. But all this requires coming to grips with flying beyond line of sight. 

“If we want to really have UAVs embraced at a productive scale in agriculture, drones operating BVLOS is going to become important to cover more area,” said Bobby Vick, director of agriculture at PrecisionHawk, a drone and data company in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Need to Fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight

The potential value drones have for farming has largely been stymied because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) currently limits unmanned aircraft to fly within visual line of sight of their pilots in the United States. 

“You can’t cover the acreage needed to be covered with those restrictions,” Lott said. “With visual line of sight one can see only about 2,500 feet, more or less, so I might be able to cover a mile end to end if I was standing in the middle of the field. You can’t cover the fields that need to be covered efficiently if you have to constantly reposition yourself. It’s just not a productive way to utilize an aircraft, to give farmers the information they need at the most reasonable, economical rate possible. It’s a real hindrance to the successful growth of UAS in the ag community when you are limited to visual line of sight.” 

As such, the drone industry has long pushed for beyond line of sight operations. 

“It’s all about reducing the cost of information acquisition,” said Michael Ritter, CEO of San Diego-based SlantRange. “At present, one operator per system is required within visual line of sight, which, depending on your aircraft type, might be up to about one kilometer.” 

With BVLOS, drones can operate across larger areas. PrecisionHawk has estimated BVLOS can drive the cost of data acquisition down by more than 10 times, Ritter said. 

“We simply have to go the distance,” Lott added.