Recently CNN reported that the US Department of Homeland Security recently released a report warning that Chinese-made drones may be sending sensitive flight data to Chinese manufacturers, which could be accessed by the government. The warning, issued by the US Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Directorate, stated that the drones "pose a potential risk to organisations' information".
The warning mentions that local US law enforcement agencies and infrastructure operators have grown to rely on drones in recent years. The U.S. government has expressed strong concerns about any technological product that brings U.S.-based data into the domain of another country that allows its intelligence services unfettered access to that data or otherwise misuses it.
DJI occupies 70 per cent of the global market share for consumer drones and has always had a monopoly in the market, and this is not the first time the US has issued a "deportation order" to DJI. Two years ago, the U.S. military banned DJI from using its products on the grounds that it would provide critical infrastructure information and law enforcement data to the Chinese government, but this does not seem to have prevented the U.S. market from favouring DJI's products.
The real advantage of DJI's successive years of victory is the speed of iteration, each new product will set off a wave of technological craze. 2014, DJI launched the Elf 2, compared with the Elf 1, which has a powerful camera function; in 2015, DJI launched the Elf 3, which is the true meaning of the all-in-one quadcopter drone; in less than a year, the Elf 4 was launched, its largest quadcopter drone. In less than a year, the Elf 4 was launched, and its biggest highlight is the automatic obstacle avoidance, an innovative feature that throws competitors' products far away from a few streets.
DJI Genie 4 has automatic obstacle avoidance during flight, which greatly improves the flight safety of the drone, avoids collision of the drone during flight, and provides an additional layer of protection in handling. The automatic obstacle avoidance function is through the ultrasonic sensor to collect information about the surrounding environment, measure the distance and then make corresponding action instructions, so as to achieve the role of obstacle avoidance.
Ultrasonic obstacle avoidance
Ultrasonic wave is actually a kind of sound wave, because the frequency is higher than 20kHz, so the human ear can not hear, and the directivity is stronger. The principle of ultrasonic ranging is simpler than infrared, because the sound wave will reflect when it encounters an obstacle, and the speed of the sound wave is known, so you only need to know the time difference between launching and receiving, and you can easily calculate the measured distance, and then combined with the distance between the transmitter and receiver, you can calculate the actual distance of the obstacle, as shown in the figure below.
Obstacle avoidance function as a major trend in recent years of drone products, the most direct benefit is that, in the past, some human negligence caused by the collision, now can be avoided through the obstacle avoidance function, not only to protect the safety of the drone flight at the same time, but also to avoid the damage to the surrounding personnel and property, so that the threshold of flying a drone has been further reduced.
In the long run, if drones want to be popularised in agriculture, construction, transport, media and other fields, intelligence is definitely the way to go, after all, only when the flight function is intelligently controlled will there be room to meet the needs of different industries. Nowadays, a series of intelligent flight functions derived from the obstacle avoidance function is undoubtedly one of the stage embodiments of drone intelligence.
As the provider of DJI Elf 4 automatic obstacle avoidance sensor, Audiowell has more than ten years of research and experience accumulation in ultrasonic obstacle avoidance programme, with ultrasonic sensors selling more than 30 million pcs annually, which are not only applied in drone intelligence, but also widely used in automotive electronics, smart home, security and communication, and other fields.
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