If anywhere we talk about drones, then the image of the DJI company pops up in everyone’s head immediately. And in general, this attitude to the company is more than deserved, but do not be mistaken and go to extremes, because there are several other companies such as Parrot, Skydio, Yuneec, on the market that are also involved in the creation of drones, and it turns out that they are no worse than the above giant.
One of these manufacturers is Autel Robotics, which has announced a new series of EVO II drones at the CES 2020 exhibition. The EVO II series includes the world’s first folding drone EVO II with an 8K video camera, as well as the EVO II PRO model with a 6K camera and the EVO PRO II Dual drone with support for shooting 8K and infrared images.
It is worth saying that all three of the above drones models have the same bodies, but in the meantime, the cameras for all these drones are different.
Models of the new series are distinguished by the longest battery life among all folding drones. The drones have a built-in battery with a capacity of 7100 mAh is to provide up to 40 minutes of flight. The maximum speed of drones is 45 mph (72 km/h), flight range – up to 9 km.
The drones are equipped with an omnidirectional obstacle flight system based on the patented Autel Dynamic Track 2.0 technology with 12 computer vision sensors, using a dual-core processor and allowing to detect potential obstacles at a distance of 30 meters. The system is capable of tracking up to 64 objects at a time, including people, vehicles, and animals.
The standard EVO II model has an 8K camera with a 1/2-inch CMOS sensor capable of capturing 48-megapixel photos (8000 × 6000 pixels) and a 10-bit video with a resolution of 7680 × 4320 pixels. The EVO II Dual has the same 8K camera with a 1/2-inch CMOS sensor, plus you can use it to shoot thermal images with a resolution of 640 × 512 and 320 × 256 pixels thanks to the optional infrared camera FLIR LWR.
On the other hand, the EVO II Pro comes with a large 1-inch CMOS sensor with 20 million effective pixels, which provides shooting with a maximum resolution of 5472 × 3648 pixels. Its camera supports 6K HDR video recording and has an f/2.8 – f/11 variable aperture lens.
All three drones have onboard 8 GB of flash memory with the ability to expand up to 256 GB thanks to the slot for SD memory cards. The models Autel EVO II, Autel EVO II Pro, and Autel EVO II Dual weighs 1,127g, 1,174g, and 1,192 g, respectively.
The drones are currently in production; pricing and availability will be announced soon.
