Drone News Roundup: Island Adventure with the Mini 4 Pro, FBI Shares Drone Advisory, and More!

This week we’re covering a tour of the French island of Corsica shot entirely on the DJI Mini 4 Pro.

We’re also covering a new drone advisory from the FBI, a dock for the DJI Mavic 3 Pro from the world’s largest EV maker, the upcoming deadline for submitting to Skypixel’s 9th annual contest, and Wing’s new, bigger delivery drones.

Now let’s get to those links!

Corsica—An Island Adventure with the Mini 4 Pro

Located in the Mediterranean Sea, the island of Corsica is part of France—but, in many ways, it’s a world unto itself. A chain of mountains dominates the island, taking up two-thirds of its 114-mile length, and we can see those mountains everywhere in the beautiful vistas and sweeping landscape shots captured in this tour of the island shot entirely on the DJI Mini 4 Pro. The video was made by videographer Alessandro Morolla, who uses Corsica as a beautiful subject for showcasing the impressive cinematic shots you can get with the newest iteration of the Mini, highlighting not only the quality of its footage, but also its low light capabilities and its 360° obstacle avoidance in complex environments.

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FBI Shares Anti-China Drone Advisory

The Matrice 350 RTK | Credit: DJI

Piling onto the anti-Chinese drone movement, the FBI has released an advisory focused specifically on drones from China. The advisory was created in a partnership between the FB and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and warns that the Chinese government has “expanded legal grounds for accessing and controlling data” from Chinese drone companies, and therefore using Chines drones requires “careful consideration.” The advisory goes on to provide guidance on how to procure and use drones without risking data breaches.

Both the warnings and the guidance are familiar by now. But what’s new in this advisory is that it’s meant for “any organization procuring and operating UAS.” That is, the FBI and CISA are calling for everyone to drop DJI—not just federal government agencies. The advisory comes on the heals of a new law that will ban DJI drones from the federal government, and presents one more step toward a full DJI ban in the U.S. (We should note that, despite advisories like these, there has been no concrete evidence presented that DJI is actually stealing data and sharing it with the Chinese government.)

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Biggest EV Company in the World Demos Mavic 3 Drone Dock

@xdrones_vfx BYD U8 + DJI Mavic 3 + Auto Docker #CapCut #dji # byd #bydu8 #djimavic3 #djimavic3pro ♬ som original – Xdrones vfX

BYD is the biggest maker of electric vehicles in the world (though that designation is new—it just overtook Tesla in global sales). And now you can put a Mavic 3 Pro drone dock on one of its cars. The video above shows a demo of an “Auto Docker” made for an U8 SUV EV manufactured by a subsidiary of BYD’s called YangWang. The dock stores and deploys the drone, and also comes with a robot to swap the drone’s batteries, all of which can be controlled at the push of a button.

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Skypixel Submissions Close February 2

Skypixel’s 9th annual contest is still open for submissions—but not for much longer. The deadline to get your best aerial photos and videos in is next Friday, February 2. This year, the contest will be giving out 79 awards at a total value of $200,000. Aerial video categories are Nature, Sports, Travel, City, Creativity, and aerial photo categories are Nature, Sports, Architecture, and Portrait. If you have some drone work you’re proud of that falls into any of these categories, now’s the time to put it out there! Follow the link below for more details on the contest, and to submit your work.

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Wing Rolls Out Bigger Delivery Drone

Drone delivery company Wing has unveiled a new, bigger delivery drone. The drone adds to the Wing fleet, building out what it has previously called its “aircraft library.” In a blog post about the library when the idea was first made public, Wing said that it will be making larger drones for shipping fulfillment—meaning, light cargo package delivery as opposed to smaller food and retail items. The new drone can carry up to five pounds and is an eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing), just like Wing’s existing delivery drone.

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