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    DJI Mavic Air is foldable with 3-axis gimbal and FlightAutonomy 2.0

    DJI have announced a new drone overnight, the Mavic Air. The new drone features a new 3-Axis gimbal that’s packed inside the body to protect the camera, while still allowing silky smooth 4K video capture. Now here’s where things get interesting, that new camera shoots 4K at 30fps capturing at a stunning 100Mbps bitrate, that makes for amazingly clear video, perfect for capturing the amazing locations you visit, anywhere around the globe.

    The camera also features some other neat tricks, like horizontal and vertical 180-degree panoramas, as well as the ability to create spherical panoramas. These 32MP spheres come from stitching 25 photos together which takes just 8 seconds and truly captures the world around you. There are many platforms that support 360 panoramas, like YouTube and Facebook and for those with video editing software like Adobe Premiere or After Effects, you could take this capture and augment it with data overlays.

    Something that’s always challenged drone operators is the changes to light levels, making it easy to end up with overexposed or underexposed content from the onboard camera. DJI believe they now have a new HDR algorithm that’ll make lighting perfect every time, regardless of lighting conditions.

    As with every new drone from DJI, you’d expect the features to build on what we already know from the company and that’s exactly the case here. The DJI Mavic Air features ActiveTrack, Tap to fly, gesture control and more.

    Now for the smarts.. The Mavic Air features FlightAutonomy 2.0. This uses a powerful array of sensors from the primary gimbal camera, forward, backward, and downward dual-vision sensors, downward infrared sensing system, IMU redundancies, and a group of computing cores to safely navigate the world around you. The 3D map data about the surrounding environment is passed to the Advanced Pilot Assistance Systems (APAS) allowing the aircraft to bypass obstacles in front of and behind it actively. This should give pilots more confidence the drone can protect itself from obstacles, which opens the door to it being used in more complex environments.

    Now for the specs:

    • Flight time – 21 minutes (2970 mAh battery)
    • Max Speed – 68.4 kph
    • Foldable controller included
    • New Wi-Fi video transmission over 2.4/5.8GHz
    • Photo Format JPEG/DNG (RAW)
    • Video Format MP4/MOV (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC)
    • Weight: 430 grams
    • Dimensions (L×W×H) – Folded: 168×83×49 mm, Unfolded: 168×184×64 mm
    • Internal storage 8GB, expandable up to 128GB with MicroSD Class 10 or UHS-1 rating
    • Supports DJI Goggles (not legal in Aus for pilot)

    The DJI Mavic Air is available now in Arctic White, Onyx Black or Flame Red and is estimated to ship within 10-15 business days. It costs US$799.00, at the time of writing, that equates to A$998.75 in Aussie dollars, add 10% and we’re at A$1,098.625. We’ll update this when the real Australian price goes live.

    Jason Cartwright
    Jason Cartwrighthttps://techau.com.au/author/jason/
    Creator of techAU, Jason has spent the dozen+ years covering technology in Australia and around the world. Bringing a background in multimedia and passion for technology to the job, Cartwright delivers detailed product reviews, event coverage and industry news on a daily basis. Disclaimer: Tesla Shareholder from 20/01/2021

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