Chinese company makes agri drone with first virtual tilt-zoom camera

Chinese drone maker DJI on Thursday unveiled a new model, the T60 agricultural drone, with the industry's first virtual pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera to achieve electronic image stabilization and smoother images.

The DJI T60 can be used in various fields, including farming, forestry and aquaculture, with functions such as farmland spraying and aerial seeding, said the company based in Shenzhen city, south China's Guangdong Province, at the product-launch press conference on Thursday.

Combined with a visual radar mapping fusion algorithm, the T60 drone's avionics computing power has been increased by 10 times, according to the drone maker.

With a new "three-eyed" fish eye vision system, the drone's observation distance has also been increased to 60 meters, said DJI, adding that while ensuring a high success rate of avoiding obstacles on power poles and trees, T60's ability to avoid obstacles in difficult scenarios such as dead trees and wires has also been further improved.

Adopting 56-inch high-strength propellers, the drone is equipped with a large-load motor and high-power modulation, which increase its comprehensive single-axis pulling force by 33 percent.

It can be used for full-load spreading operations even with low battery, which ensures high-intensity and large-load operations with capacity of 50-kilogram spraying load and 60-kilogram spreading load.

On the same day, the company also launched the T25P drone, a lightweight model that is more flexible and convenient for operating on scattered and small plots.

According to the company, its drone products have assisted agricultural production in an area of 650 million mu (about 43.3 million hectares) in China this year, which accounts for about 30 percent of the country's total arable land.

DJI agricultural drones are being operated in more than 100 countries and regions, according to the drone maker. 

(With input from Xinhua)