What would you do when you become one of the first companies in the world to purchase DJI’s inaugural drone-in-a-nest system, the DJI Dock?

Set the little beats inside free of course.

And that is exactly what drone services company RocketDNA has done.

The Africa and Australia-based company has just announced that it has secured approval from the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) to fly some of its drones beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight (BVLOS).

Granted earlier this week, the licence makes RocketDNA the first drone operator in Australia with such licence to roam (within reason of course) for the newly released DJI Dock.

The DJI Dock is an autonomous take-off, landing and charging station allowing fully automatic, programmed flights with the DJI M30 Series (Dock Version). It widens the horizon for automated missions that can be monitored and supervised remotely.

After setup, an M30 drone can take off to the skies from the DJI Dock on automatic missions anywhere within a seven-kilometre radius.

As RocketDNA explains, this process has been a year-long affair with the regulatory authorities, which saw the company developing safety protocols that were acceptable to regulatory standards; a coterie of policies and procedures, as well as a practical demonstration.

The company also took time to refine its flight planning protocols for applications in mining, critical asset management and thermal inspection.

“This approval unlocks a whole new set of RocketDNA products”, said CEO, Chris Clark.

“With various applications for data collection now possible to be conducted remotely, and led by the arrival of the highly anticipated DJI Dock.

“Our X-Bot (Drone-in-a-box) products are designed to automate operational workflows using drones and AI”, explains Clark, “The idea is that we can create safer and more sustainable work environments by using our autonomous drone-based, remote geo-data solutions; keeping your teams out of dangerous environments.”

RocketDNA now has an approved Remote Operating Centre in Perth, Western Australia, where a team of highly trained pilots will be able to fly drones autonomously and beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) at authorised sites in Australia.

The company has already deployed its first DJI Dock to a customer site (a gold mine) in Western Australia, where the team will begin implementing autonomous flights into existing operations.

“Thanks to our business partners pioneering in areas of both innovative applications and regulatory compliance, more and more users are now able to benefit from the advanced technology provided by DJI Enterprise,” said Andrew Yu, Sales Manager at DJI Enterprise.

“Upon our partnership with RocketDNA, we look forward to seeing more users incorporate our products into their automated intelligent workflows to further enhance their productivity in various aspects.”