Autel Announces Dragonfish VTOL Platform | Advexure

Autel Announces Dragonfish VTOL Platform for North America

Our friends at Autel Robotics took the virtual stage at CES 2021 to announce that their Dragonfish vertical takeoff/landing (VTOL) platform will release in the Americas market in Q2 of this year (2021). The Dragonfish is a super long endurance drone that leverages a tilt rotor design to maximize performance and efficiency while boasting a flight endurance of up to two hours (120 minutes) with its payload.

Autel has long teased the Dragonfish and shown it off on many different occasions dating all of the way back to CES 2017, which I believe is when our team here at Advexure was first exposed to the platform. The best way to put it is that Dragonfish has been what we'd call a "passion project" for Autel, but we quite honestly are stoked that the VTOL is finally coming to fruition for production and public release.

VTOLs allow for takeoff and landing when space is restricted, for many years, some of the longer endurance UAV platforms have required takeoff and landing zones that were often restrictive and unavailable in some flight environments. Not only can the Dragonfish take off where space is limited, but its rapid deployment and assembly process allows for launch in under three minutes.

Payloads

Autel anticipates that the Dragonfish will be expandable and flexible to fit into virtually any workflow but the following payloads are expected to be the initial payloads released for the Dragonfish:

4K Dual Sensor – 4K 20x Stabilized Optical Zoom + 48MP Wide Angle
Triple Sensor – 4K 20x Stabilized Optical Zoom + 48MP Wide Angle + FLIR 640x512 Radiometric Thermal
Multispectral – 5 Multispectral Sensors (2MP) + RGB Wide Angle (48MP)
Third Party Payloads – Payload SDK program for third parties to develop unique payload solutions

Dragonfish Ground Control Station

Autel's EVO II owners have long dreamed of having a "Dragonfish-like" ground control station for the EVO II, but currently Autel's GCS is reserved solely for the Dragonfish. The control station features a high resolution 2048×1536, 9.7", ultra-bright (1000 nits) LCD touchscreen. The Dragonfish GCS is also water, dust, and water resistant and Autel's new antenna design allows the video transmission to reach up to 18.6 miles (30km).