Controversial Chinese drone maker DJI debuts a cargo carrier Chinese drone-maker DJI, the subject of US sanctions, has released its first consumer cargo carrying drone – the FlyCart 30. The all-weather $17,000 drone has four axes, eight carbon fiber propellers, and when equipped with a pair of self-heating batteries can can carry as much as 30kg over a distance of 16km. With no cargo …
So, it dangles with a dongle?
What could possibly go wrong? I'll
Put a bet on that it plummets to the ground.
Just like GM Cruise's taxis,
A 'copter with 4 axes
Is a brick when there's no signal to be found.
The drone incorporates two batteries for resilience, but removing one allows it to carry 40kg of weight and hit a top speed of 20 meters per second. That's quite quick, even compared to an unladen African swallow.
Come on El Reg, a quick trip the Reg Standards Bureau will tell you that the official unit for speed is the velocity of a sheep in a vacuum. The handy converter will tell you that it's 0.0007%. Please update the article forthwith.
It might have much more payload capacity than a swallow but it can't complete in other ways: travelling over 300km a day for weeks at a time to migrate over 6000km, literally never landing while feeding and sleeping airborne, and being powered by little insects. Drone tech has catching up to do in some respects.
Given that it would be nice not to have 40kg of high explosive dropped on or even gently dangled above my head I wonder whether there is a market for leaner faster [than 20m/s 72km/h 45mph 2×Vswallow*] kamikaze drones which could search in coordinated clusters that locate and disarm offensive drones?
They already exist - after the Gatwick debacle a few years ago, I know the UK police have been testing a few (sourced from canadian miltary if I remember correctly).
They're not kamikaze, I know that much - I think there were several options being explored for bringing the other one down including dropping nets on them etc.
They're not kamikaze, I know that much - I think there were several options being explored for bringing the other one down including dropping nets on them etc.
I guess with a drone this size/power, it could probably sling some form of butterfly net for evidence collection. Or if it's got advanced stabilisation, become the world's smallest gunship. I guess at $17k, it keeps them out of the hands of casual nutjobs, but something that can drop the equivalent of a couple of sacks of cement is probably something that should be licensed and regulated. But also-
The all-weather $17,000 drone has four axes
Careful with those axes, Eugene.
A kilometer is more than enough. Move away from the launcher (to keep your position hidden), then pop up, maybe some more maneuvering, deploy missle. Afterwards maybe some scouting, would not even bother with recovery. Downside: you^ll probably need an operator on the launcher, so MBTs are not an option.
And what about that surface-to-air missile which Tony Blair pinky swore was in the hands of terrorists in the UK the day he closed Heathrow ... and, quite coincidentally, had the Commons vote on invading Iraq? Has that ever turned up? Are the authorities still as worried about it?
The Gatwick drones were definitely not imaginary - but a little bird told me that as Gatwick is at the nexus of several police forces, at least part of the issue was that several forces had brought their own, ad-hoc anti-drone drones and had failed to coordinate with their colleagues. This same bird was the one telling me about the canadian drones, purchased centrally, so you can draw your own conclusions about what lessons were learned.
Funny how what gets decided as “we the people” always nicely coincides with the beliefs of “me the person”.
All the “we the people” junk when Canadian, US, NZ centres of government were invaded and occupied during COVID were just examples of “them the fuckwits”.
The closest we get to any actual examples of “we the people” is from representative election results. Even then, at best you have a little over 1/2 the voting adult population broadly agreeing on general policy.
They engaged in some incredibly aggressive tactics in the early days of the drone industry, with evidence that they paid workers to post claims of crashes for rival companies' drones amongst other manipualtion of reviews. Their size in the market has allowed them to pre-empt rival launches with model announcements in every market segment.
Since then, their drones have been accused of sending data back to China and of having known security holes that may benefit Chinese intelligence operations. Various of their apps have been shown to allow remote installation of arbitrary software on a user's phone without their consent.
They have also been accused of knowingly supplying kit for military operations and involvement with the Uyghur genocides. Inevitably, as the supplier of 4/5ths of the world's drones, their machines have been implicated in war and terrorist attacks, noteably both sides of the Ukraine war.
Yes, they are controversial.
This is not "being a target". A large number of organisations have come to rely on a near monopolistic supply of drones from a company that has had an inconsistent history when it comes to honesty and security. It would be ridiculous to pretend that this makes them "just a quadcopter manufacturer", or to avoid continued scruitiny in the future.
I'm guessing they are touting it for mountainous areas where you might have to drive all day to deliver to a half dozen people because of all the windy roads. If you could put the package on a drone and fly it over the mountain to the next valley where your destination is you'd save a lot of money.
You don't build a drone with a 6000 meter ceiling for deliveries in populated areas, this isn't intended for them so you won't need to worry about a box dropping on your head unless you live in the mountains or are skiing lol
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