Amid a swell of leaked images suggesting the imminent arrival of a foldable industrial drone, DJI has announced that it will be holding a product event on March 21 this year.

Not surprisingly, the world’s biggest drone manufacturer has kept its lips slammed shut about its coming product; but what’s interesting is that the announcement has been made by the Enterprise division of the company.

The latest leaks are about an enterprise drone – a possible new Matrice baby that has borrowed the folding qualities of its siblings in the Mavic range.

According to a few DJI inside information ITKs (In The Knows), the new Matrice’s propellers will be foldable and the drone itself will be compact. But an untrained glance on the leaked images clearly shows that the new baby has really close resemblance to the current flagship, the Matrice 300.

The M300 is a sturdy drone has been a hit with enterprise applications that include policing, search and rescue, security, survey and mapping, as well as several applications in public safety and emergency response.

But our favourite was when the M300 was used as the drone of choice for a proof-of-concept demonstration for medical drones in Benin last year.

The photos show the new DJI Matrice drone has two batteries sliding in from the back as is now customary with all new DJI drones.

It would be interesting to finally reveal what other features the new product will boast of, besides what seems to be three-axis mechanically stabilised camera, possibly outfitted with a telelens combined with a wide-angle lens to offer an extended digital zoom option, as well as a thermal camera – as offered by the current flagship.

Other features to look out for would be the capability to add or swap out the payload and obstacle avoidance.

There are users who feel the current issues of the DJI enterprise Matrice range are large and too cumbersome to travel with, and this more compact new arrival could offer the best of both worlds – the industrial capabilities of a large Matrice drone coming in the easily portable and foldable compactness of a Mavic UAV.

For now, we will have to wait and see.

The launch is only four days away now.