It was all about the payload when DJI finally unveiled its new flagship unmanned aerial vehicle for enterprise users yesterday.

As earlier rumoured, the new DJI Matrice30 drone is like the Matrice and the Mavic had a baby, for it has foldable propellers and is also conspicuously made more compact by the absence of that big landing gear synonymous with previous issues of the Matrice range.

But while it might have become a more portable, the drone has lost none of its enterprise industrial qualities, as it comes with a more robust camera, a revamped remote controller and improved flight management system.

This is all according to the manufacturer, who provided the below information about their new products at yesterday’s launch.

The DJI M30 comes with the RC Plus remote controller, a set of batteries and a charging box. FlightHub 2 will have a free testing period for all users.

The new drones will come at a price of roughly $10,000 for the M30 and over $14,000 for the M30T.

DJI, the world leader in civilian drones and aerial imaging technology, today launches an all-in-one solution for professional drone operators that for the first time puts a powerful flying platform in the service of a fully remote fleet management system and an autonomous docking and recharging station.

This integrated solution unlocks powerful new functionality for Enterprise drone users such as public safety agencies, infrastructure inspectors and energy operators, allowing them to build next-generation operations that finally unlock the full potential of DJI’s transformative technology.

“DJI Enterprise is devoted to researching and developing new drone solutions explicitly designed to revolutionise work, helping everyday heroes in their missions to save lives, maintaining physical infrastructure, and preserving the natural environment,” said Christina Zhang, Senior Director, Corporate Strategy at DJI.

“With the outstanding performance, transportability and ease of use of the DJI Matrice 30 drone and its perfect integration with the DJI FlightHub 2 Fleet Management Cloud Software and DJI Dock, DJI is stepping into the future for our Enterprise customers who will be able to enter the autonomous solutions space, creating possibilities to fly beyond visual line of sight with the appropriate regulatory permissions in place.

“We are proud to deliver the next generation of aerial tools that will save lives and bring work to new heights, with a 360-degree product solution suite for a variety of fields such as energy inspection, emergency rescue missions, environmental protection, and the digitization and preservation of cultural heritage.”

The New DJI Matrice 30 – A Mighty, Versatile, Transportable Commercial Drone

The new DJI Matrice 30 is DJI Enterprise’s flagship drone that fits in a backpack. It integrates multiple high-performance sensors into one single camera payload, is controlled with an ingenious redesigned remote control and runs on upgraded Pilot 2 software, which significantly improves the flight experience. The M30 model offers much more power, endurance and capability for rugged professional uses, while its size makes it ideal for easy transportation and fast setup.

Apart from its outstanding performance and new format, the DJI M30 allows professionals to fly and perform beyond their immediate surroundings. It integrates smoothly with the new DJI FlightHub 2 fleet management cloud-based software and the DJI Dock for collaboration with remote and unattended operations, bringing efficiency innovation to various industries.

The M30 series comes in two versions, the M30 and the M30T (T for Thermal capabilities). The M30 model integrates a 48-megapixel half inch CMOS sensor zoom camera with between 5^X and 16^X optical and 200^X 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 640×512 pixel radiometric thermal camera.

A Robust, Safe and Reliable Aerial Platform with Extraordinary Resistance

With IP55 ingress protection, the M30 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 DJI M30 also offers an improved first-person view pilot camera for low light conditions, built-in redundancies and backup systems, three-propeller emergency landing, a Health Management System, and six-way obstacle avoidance sensors enabling the pilot to focus on the mission. Its four-antenna OcuSync 3 Enterprise transmission ensures a strong redundancy, and it supports LTE link backup, in the face of complex terrain and working conditions.

Unlike other commercial drones, the DJI M30 adopts a foldable integrated lightweight design (3.7 kg take-off weight) that is easy to unfold, store and carry anywhere. Its new self-heating TB30 battery design can support at least 400 charge cycles and allows a 41-minute flight time. Its smart BS30 charging case allows quick battery charging from 20 percent to 90 percent in 30 minutes. The M30 also has a new self-locking system and can be folded by just pressing a button. This makes it the fastest, easiest high-performance DJI Enterprise drone to set up.

User Data Protection: Secured and Private all the Way

DJI Enterprise customers expect the highest standards of security and privacy for their data. The M30 offers best-in-class data security protocols built on DJI’s security-first Matrice 300 V3 firmware.

Offline updates enable future firmware updates to be completed entirely offline. Firmware packages can be downloaded from the DJI official website and saved to an external storage device such a microSD card, before being uploaded into the M30 and updated with DJI Pilot.

Local Data Mode acts like “airplane mode” on a phone by completely disconnecting the DJI M30 from the internet, ensuring ALL data stays only in the drone.

SD card AES encryption protects all the photos, videos, and flight logs that get stored on the microSD card by a security code and AES encryption.

The DJI RC Plus, the new Flagship Enterprise remote controller.

The new DJI RC Plus remote controller meets the high expectations of professional pilots. The DJI RC Plus 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 DJI RC Plus has six physical buttons below the control sticks next to the screen. They make piloting much easier, giving control of mission-critical functions, like switching between wide angle, zoom, infrared, and FPV views, without having to take hands away from the control sticks.

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. The DJI RC Plus offers ports for microSD card, USB, HDMI, USB type C and 4G connectivity (where offered), for customers needing transmission redundancy.

The DJI RC Plus naturally becomes the new DJI flagship Enterprise remote controller.

DJI FlightHub 2: Elevated Awareness. Maximized Integration

The DJI FlightHub 2 is DJI Enterprise’s fleet management software. It benefits from major improvements from its first version synchronizing and coordinating between ground teams at work, drones, payloads, pilots and all the data they gather. The DJI FlightHub 2 is now entirely cloud based. It enables flight mission management and operational viewing not only from the pilot’s RC, but from any device with a web browser, such as computers, tablets, and even mobile devices. Now, everyone involved in a drone operation, from ground teams to nearby supervisors to managers in their offices, can log into the same mission and see the data gathered by the drones and the pilots.

The DJI FlightHub 2 supports mapping features enabling users to respond quickly to developing situations.

One-Tap Panorama Sync creates a 360° overview and uploads to the cloud with a single tap. Shared panoramas, and the coordinates they were captured from, are placed on your mission’s 2.5D Base Map, granting all team members quick aerial awareness.

Cloud Mapping lets users highlight an area of interest, enabling the DJI M30 to automatically map the area in 2D, offering great perspectives during emergency response planning situations. DJI FlightHub 2 will turn these images into a map, which will overlay on the user’s map service provider. Once a map is captured, it can become the base to build a mission plan around.

The DJI FlightHub 2 supports Live Annotations, which are points, lines, or polygons that users can draw on the map. Thanks to the laser rangefinder of the DJI M30, in a search and rescue mission, a pilot can pinpoint the coordinates of a missing person. These coordinates will automatically sync through the DJI FlightHub 2 mission interface allowing the command center and the team on the ground to have live updates of coordinates and to simultaneously generate rescue routes. All these maps, models and inspection data can be uploaded to the cloud, supported by AWS, and accessed and managed remotely.

DJI FlightHub 2 becomes must-have software to streamline communication between the command room and the team on ground, and manage real-time missions.