DJI has launched its new Matrice 30 Enterprise drone, sporting folding arms and more compact and portable size. The high-profile professional drone is designed to fly in harsh conditions, such as driving rain, high winds, and even snow.
The new DJI Matrice 30 adopts a foldable integrated lightweight design (3.7 kg take-off weight) that is easy to unfold, store and carry anywhere. It can be folded down to backpack-friendly proportions at the push of a button. Its new self-heating TB30 battery design can support at least 400 charge cycles and allows a 41-minute flight time, at a maximum speed of 23 m/s (83 km/h), and can get up to 7,000 m (about 23,000 ft) above sea level when optioned with high altitude props.
Its smart BS30 charging case allows quick battery charging from 20% to 90% in 30 minutes. Six sensors allow automatic obstacle avoidance, and an emergency system allows the drone to land even when an engine is not running.
The M30 series comes in two versions, the M30, and the M30T. The M30 model integrates a 48 megapixel 1/2-inch CMOS sensor zoom camera with 5 to 16× optical and 200× digital zoom (plus 200x digital zoom), a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera, 8k photo 4K/30 fps video resolution, and a laser rangefinder which can give the precise coordinates of objects up to 1,200 meters away. The M30T features an additional 640 x 512-pixel radiometric thermal camera.
Protection against water is guaranteed with IP55 certification, which offers outstanding performance in harsh environments, in heavy rains, high winds, high altitudes, even in icy and snowy conditions and extreme temperatures from -20° C to 50° C.
The drone comes with the new DJI RC Plus remote controller that features a 7-inch-wide high-definition screen enabling pilots to see more visual information thanks to an impressive brightness. As the DJI RC Plus is IP54 certified, similar to the M30 drone, it can be used in heavy rain.
The RC has 6 hours of screen-on time. It has an internal battery and a swappable external battery, preventing the interruption of a mission. In addition, the DJI RC Plus offers ports for microSD cards, USB, HDMI, USB type C, and 4G connectivity (where offered) for customers needing transmission redundancy.
The new drone integrates smoothly with the new DJI FlightHub 2 fleet management cloud-based software, and an autonomous docking station called the DJI Dock for collaboration with remote and unattended operations, bringing efficiency innovation to various industries. The DJI Dock integrates built-in antennas, a weather station, ultra-wide-angle surveillance cameras, and a D-RTK base station.
After setup, the fully charged M30 drone can take off to the skies from the DJI Dock through FlightHub 2 programmed automatic missions anywhere within a 7 km radius. Once the drone lands after its mission, the drone is charged with fast charging in the dock and can take off again only 25 minutes after it lands.
The pricing of DJI Matrice 30 starts at $9,999, going to $13,999 for the M30T and its heat-sensing camera. FlightHub 2 will have a free testing period for all users. DJI Dock is currently being tested with selected users and will be available for purchase starting from Q4 2022.
