The stingy, irregular drips that used to seep out of drone giant DJI about products under development have in recent months turned into something of a deluge, with an additional glut of leaks bursting forth this weekend on the company’s rumored Mini 4 Pro and a mysterious, non-folding enterprise craft.
As has been the case for nearly a year now, the source of most of that new drone imagery – which DJI would presumably have liked to keep under cover until it introduces the products on its own – was @Quadro_News’s Igor Bogdanov. On Saturday he followed up an earlier flurry of still photos of what he called the non-folding, raised-armed “industrial” development craft with video of the rumored Mini 4 Pro in flight.
Coming as that did in the wake of several photos and videos apparently taken by opportunistic bystanders spotting DJI flight testing nearby, it now seems fairly certain the company is heading toward the eventual introduction of a Mini 4 Pro, on the heels of its Air 3 drone launch earlier this month.
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Most of the weekend visuals, however, were of the now somewhat less enigmatic DJI “industrial” drone under development, shots which Bodganov also rustled up late last week.
Sunday, he went one better by uploading a video of the craft, whose non-folding, raised rotor arms made it look in early, blurry photos like a half-way version between a Mavic or Mini and an Inspire.
That footage was part of a somewhat longer video shared around the same time by @NGDrone, which included opening shots filmed by a trailing drone, or from a dizzyingly high window.
Comparisons by Bogdanov of DJI Mavic photos and hazy captures of the new enterprise UAV seem to offer some hints about what kind of chops the new craft may be packing.
Meanwhile, a knowledgeable UAV sector source who prefers not to go on the record with speculation about the developmental drone tends to agree with the view it’s probably a smaller variant of DJI’s M30.
That, the source noted, appears to include the Mavic form factor while removing the folding ability, suggesting the new craft is probably intended for docked deployment for regular surveillance, monitoring, or other visual or data collection missions.
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A reduced size in that setup, the source notes, doesn’t offer any obvious benefits – based on what’s known about the craft thus far, that is – though it may involve cheaper production costs and tech assets that enhance affordability for enterprise customers with tighter budgets.
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