DJI Launches New Airport 3 for Industrial Applications: Can Be Deployed in Vehicles and Costs Over 100,000 Yuan | Frontline

Text｜Hu Yiting

Editor｜Yuan Silai

On February 27, DJI's Enterprise Solutions series launched a new product. This time, DJI released the Airport 3, its first unmanned vehicle-deployable and unattended platform. It is equipped with the Matrice 4D/Matrice 4TD high-performance unmanned aircraft, enabling all-weather and all-scenario unattended operations.

The first vehicle-deployable and unattended platform DJI Airport 3, Image courtesy of the company

Compared to the previous two generations of products, to solve the protection problem of the aircraft gimbal during driving, the DJI Airport 3 supports vehicle-mounted mobile deployment for the first time and is equipped with a vehicle-mounted gimbal fixing device, which can make the scheduling more efficient in emergency operations and also cover the operational needs of long-distance inspections.

In terms of regular operations, Airport 3 can handle various complex environments. In terms of basic performance, the protection level of Airport 3 reaches IP56, and the protection of the built-in Matrice 4D/Matrice 4TD unmanned aircraft can reach IP55. This enables Airport 3 to remain operational and charging in extreme environments with temperatures as high as 50°C or as low as -30°C.

Shortening the takeoff time is also an iterative performance of industrial application-level unmanned aircraft. Currently, Airport 3 can take off with the cover opened in as fast as 10 seconds to observe the core area from a high altitude. After enabling the intelligent planning of the optimal flight route, the unmanned aircraft can reach the designated point at a height of 100 meters and 1 kilometer away within 100 seconds, achieving simultaneous flight and transmission and rapid modeling.

Wan Zheyu, an engineer of DJI's Enterprise Solutions, told Yingke: "Simultaneous flight and transmission is a new feature. Due to the transmission rate of Airport 3 being four times that of the previous generation, it can basically achieve transmitting one image after taking one in the case of automatic operations at the airport and a particularly large amount of data. When the unmanned aircraft lands, (the shooting content) can be almost completely transmitted, saving the user's waiting time for transmission."

In addition, to solve the RTK and image transmission signal problems caused by occlusion, Airport 3 is also used with the new-generation D-RTK 3 relay station. It is understood that the farthest image transmission distance of Airport 3 can be extended to 25 kilometers, making the fixed deployment location of the airport more flexible. Even in a city with tall buildings or in an environment with strong interference from the tower, the deployment of the D-RTK3 relay station can provide a stable and high-precision positioning signal for the unmanned aircraft during operations.

DJI Matrice 4D/4TD unmanned aircraft, Image courtesy of the company

The DJI Matrice 4D/4TD unmanned aircraft equipped with DJI Airport 3 is the continuation and upgrade of the Matrice 4 series. In terms of hardware, both unmanned aircraft are equipped with a wide-angle camera, a medium telephoto camera, a telephoto camera, and a laser ranging module. The Matrice 4D can meet the operational requirements of high-precision professional mapping and fine surface inspection; the 4TD is additionally equipped with a thermal imaging camera and a new near-infrared fill light, which can cover many application scenarios such as energy inspection, emergency rescue, and public safety.

In the scenario of strong wind interference during operations, the Matrice 4D/4TD unmanned aircraft can take off and land stably in a wind speed of up to 12 meters per second and stay in the air for up to 32 minutes. When fully charged, it can also fly at a speed of 15 meters per second for 47 minutes, and the net operation time is 37% longer than that of Airport 2.

While the performance is improved, as an industrial application-level product, data security and compliance are quite important. It is understood that Airport 3 is equipped with Skylink 2 to support custom permission management, AES-256 image transmission encryption, and 4G enhanced image transmission private deployment, and users can deploy it to a pure internal network.

In the market, the Airport series products launched by DJI since 2022 have been applied in areas such as airport government affairs flights, power inspection, and cultivated land protection.

The DJI Airport 3 launched this time includes two sets. The set containing the DJI Matrice 4D aircraft has an official domestic starting price of 117,999 yuan; the set containing the DJI Matrice 4TD aircraft has an official domestic starting price of 130,999 yuan, and it will be sold to industry users.