Frontline | DJI Releases Dock 4, Introducing 25-second Automatic Battery Swap for the First Time

Article by Zhang Ziyi

Edited by Yuan Silai

36Kr learned that on October 14, DJI released the DJI Dock 4. This is DJI's first unattended platform with an automatic battery swapping solution, compatible with the Matrice 5TD drone and the O4 Ground Station. The price of its domestic package is RMB 167,999, with software subscriptions, non-standard scenario deployment and other optional services requiring additional fees, and reservations are now open.

Drone docks are a type of fixedly deployed automated stations that undertake tasks such as drone takeoff and landing, energy replenishment, communication and data return. For high-frequency tasks such as power line inspection, forest fire prevention, emergency rescue and urban governance, it can reduce the need for drone operators to carry equipment to the site repeatedly, turning drones from temporarily deployed operation tools into fixed nodes that can be remotely dispatched.

DJI launched the first generation of its dock product line in 2022, and the Dock 4 is the fourth-generation product of this series. According to the company's disclosure, the DJI Dock series has been deployed in more than 80 countries and regions around the world, with a total of over 8 million flight sorties and 2 million hours of unattended operations completed.

The most significant change of the Dock 4 is that it replaces the fast charging solution of the previous generation with automatic battery swapping. In the past, drones needed to be charged in place after returning to the dock, and the interval between two tasks was usually about half an hour; the Dock 4 can complete battery replacement within 25 seconds and take off again within 45 seconds. The maximum flight duration of the supporting drone for a single sortie is 59 minutes.

This improvement is not aimed at the single flight time, but the ground waiting time between consecutive tasks. In routine inspection scenarios, a half-hour charging time is generally acceptable, but in scenarios such as fires, earthquakes or continuous inspection, the energy replenishment gap will affect on-site coverage. With battery swapping, the drone can quickly continue the task after the previous sortie ends.

According to DJI, the Dock 4 adopts a turntable-type battery swapping structure, which can automatically take out the drained battery, install a fully charged battery and complete system self-check. To shorten the startup time after battery swapping, the equipment is also equipped with a wireless power supply system, which maintains the operation of the drone's avionics system when the battery is removed. The dock can operate in environments ranging from -40°C to 50°C; relevant parameters are all from DJI's controlled environment tests, and the actual performance will vary with the environment and usage patterns.

The Matrice 5TD that comes with the Dock 4 integrates multiple modules such as telephoto, infrared and laser rangefinder. According to DJI's test data, its 11x telephoto lens can identify license plates within 400 meters, and recognize small targets such as bolts and pins within 100 meters; the maximum range of the laser rangefinder is 3 kilometers, which can superimpose distance and target coordinates on the image transmission screen.

The Matrice 5TD has a maximum effective payload of 450 grams and provides three mounting positions. For example, in night search and rescue scenarios, it can carry a loudhailer, a searchlight and a parachute at the same time. In terms of flight safety, the fuselage is equipped with a three-way millimeter-wave radar, a panoramic scanning LiDAR and a six-directional visual perception system, and supports takeoff and landing at a wind speed of 12 m/s.

The Dock 4 also extends AI recognition to the flight and back-end systems. The Matrice 5TD can identify 17 types of targets in real time on the airborne side, including vehicles, vessels, smoke and flames, and supports access to third-party models; DJI FlightHub 2 is responsible for remote control, route tasks, online detection, alerts and equipment operation and maintenance. The concurrently launched Cloud API 2 is designed to help enterprises and developers connect the dock to their existing business systems.

From the perspective of product architecture, the Dock 4 is not just an additional faster energy replenishment device for drones, but a complete unattended system that integrates the aircraft, battery swapping mechanism, perception payload, AI recognition and back-end scheduling. Its core change is to minimize the dependence on personnel and time between two tasks, providing basic conditions for high-frequency and continuous operations.