The rival of DJI's Mavic Air came - Parrot drone Anafi (part 1)

In the field of drones, DJI is an unbeatable presence, especially the folding MAVIC series, which has become the preferred choice for consumer-grade drones. However, after layoffs and reorganization, the French veteran manufacturers have come up with a product that can compete with the DJI's Mavic Air, that is, collapsible, with 4K HDR video camera and even zoom camera - the drone Anafi.

Anafi's shape design is inspired by insects. The wings can be folded. After using carbon fiber and glass fiber materials to make the fuselage, it is lighter than insects and weighs 320g, which is 110g lighter than DJI's Mavic Air. The folded Spark weighs 20g and it's fair to say that Parrot's weight loss measures are very effective.

Anafi is light-weight, but its performance is unambiguous. It uses a Sony 1/2.4-inch CMOS sensor with a 21MP pixel. It can take Adobe DNG RAW photos and can capture up to 100Mbps 4K HDR video, or 1080/60P HD video and also supports the 4K Cinema standard. At the same time, it is equipped with a 3x optical zoom lens, taking the equivalent of 135 frames 23-69mm viewing angle, the video is equivalent to 135 frames 26-78mm viewing angle, the wide-angle end of the maximum aperture is F2.4. If the 3x optical zoom cannot meet the needs of users, the lossless digital zoom can be turned on in the video (crop format shooting), the digital zoom ratio is 2.8 times under 1080P, and the digital zoom is 1.4 times under 4K.

Excellent anti-shake is indispensable for any good quadcopter drone. Anafi uses three-axis anti-shake technology. The entire camera can also be flipped 180-degree up and down to switch the camera from the ground to the sky. This is a way of shooting that is impossible for DJI Mavic Air to achieve.

1218 UAV pieced together as "Olympic rings"

On the night of February 9, at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, 1218 UAVs built the first UAV light show in the history of the Olympic Games. UAV carrying LED lights in the air to form a three-dimensional image of a skier, then change the formation, pieced together as "Olympic rings". The Guinness Book of World Records, which flew the largest number of drones at the same time, was born here.

The 1218 unmanned aerial vehicles were Shooting Star drones made by Intel Corporation of the United States, each weighing only 330 grams, a little heavier than volleyball. Intel explained that "the unmanned aerial vehicles that were unveiled at the opening ceremony were equipped with LED lighting devices that could show more than 4 billion color combinations when flying to the sky." There are media reports the UAV formation this time is not on-site control, but pre-recorded because of fear of Pyeongchang overly cold weather and unpredictable winds.

In fact, Chinese companies have also used quadcopter drone for similar performances. In December 2017, 1180 UAVs produced by Chinese companies made a spectacular and varied show in Guangzhou, forming different Chinese characters and patterns, setting a world record then. The live performance and the changing patterns make it more difficult to imagine the difficulty of the programming.

An authoritative Chinese expert on the field of drone said on the "Global Times" on the 11th that the key to fancy business performance is to be accurate and coordinated. The movements are pre-arranged, and according to the location of each individual UAV in accordance with their time and path of flight, you can display complex graphics in the air. In simple terms, there is no particularly complicated algorithm, and the main task is to have each UAV fly according to the path and time of the animation simulation. The UAV GPS signals or more accurate differential GPS signal will accurately locate the spatial location.