DJI – THE SPARK OF NEW DRONE ERA
DJI (Da-Jiang Innovations) is a Chinese technology company which has its headquarters in Shenzhen and Guangdong. DJI has factories throughout the world and it is leading producer of UAVs for videography and photography. It also manufactures camera stabilizers, camera gimbals, flight platforms and flight control systems.
INTRODUCTION
DJI was founded in the year 2006 by FRANK WANG. It produces products like propulsion system, gimbal, flight platform, camcorder, camera stabilizers and especially UAVs. It has employees more than 15000 according to 2018 survey. DJI is a dominant leader in world’s drone market in civilian drone industry. Nowadays, DJI’s drones are mostly used in police and military purposes. Therefore, DJI’s drone has created more dominance in the UAV market.
HISTORY OF DJI
Frank Wang founded this company in the year 2006. He completed his degree in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and his team has won third prize in ABU Robocon. He built DJI’s first prototype and started selling to Chinese companies. The company struggled at the starting and got some finance help from Wang’s family and his friends. In 2009, they successfully piloted a drone around Mt. Everest. In 2010, he hired the high school friend to run the company and they begin to hire many drone hobbyists to increase the productivity. In 2011, they started expanding DJI branches and a branch was a worldwide success. In 2015, they released phantom 3 which is the advanced version of phantom with streaming camera. In 2017, they won technology and engineering emmy award because of its camera applications. In the same year they created surveillance drone for security purpose. In 2018, they started selling surveillance drone for US government. In 2020, it is the 77% drone producer in the US market where no other companies has more than 4%.
DJI’s INFRASTRUCTURE
It has automatic assembly line in Shenzhen branch. It has portions where drone automatically take off and performs few maneuvers and land. Though it has automation in production and testing, still many components are made in the house.
PRODUCTS PRODUCED IN DJI
FLIGHT SYSTEMS – controllers are mostly produced to control multi rotor stabilization or heavy payload for aerial photography. This product has Bluetooth connectivity, LED indicators and GPS compass.
GIMBALS, PLATFORMS, CAMERA STABILIZATION – Ronin, Ronin-s, Ronin-sc are mostly produced. All of them are produced for videography and photography.
UAVs – flame wheels are the platform of aerial photography. The most recent one is the ARF KIT.
PHANTOM – it is the most popular product of DJI which has WI-FI connectivity, camera etc. The recent phantom model launched is Phantom 4 RTK.
MAVIC – This is the foldable design launched by DJI which has 360 degree redundant sensor and also obstacle avoidance in order to prevent crashes. Because of its specifications it also separate consumer base like phantom.
SPREADING WINGS – These are industrial UAVs used for taking professional aerial photography, ultra light search and rescue, surveillance and high definition 3D mapping.
INSPIRE – It is same as phantom only changes are aluminum-magnesium body and carbon fiber arms. And also it has detachable props.
MATRICE – It is many designed for industrial application. It can carry a max payload of 6 kg. This made for industrial application, firefighting, inspection, surveillance and search and rescue.
SPARK – It is produced for the purpose of getting high quality images and also it has swapable batteries in order to increase the flight time.
CAMCODERS – osmo, osmo pocket, osmo action, zenmuse gimbal cameras are the camera types which are used for getting high resolution images and videos.
GIMBALS AND STABILIZATION PLATFORMS – osmo mobile, osmo mobile 2, osmo mobile 3 are smartphone cameras.
GOGGLES – it has wireless connectivity, LCD display, photo and video capture. It is produced to interface with DJI branched drones.
EDUCATIONAL ROBOTS – robomaster s1, robomaster ep are the two consumer ground drones. Now they called as mascot. They are designed to be the “advanced educational robot” where the user has to assemble loose part and learn to program its AI functionality.
Because of all these innovations in drone technology and production of all new products has resulted their growth in world’s drone market. It has finally resulted in holding first place in drone production. As of march 2020, DJI holds 77% of US market share.