LAS VEGAS – Professor Bart Knols is an entomologist. Here in Las Vegas, where he came from the Maldives, he is looking for someone to develop an algorithm for him. “In the archipelago, processionaries are a very serious problem: they close schools for days, people end up in hospital. My company uses agricultural drones for targeted pest control from above. Now we want to automate the process with artificial intelligence, to understand which trees to spray and how much, by analyzing the images recorded by the drone ”.
The project
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Drones against malaria
We meet Knols on the sidelines of his presentation at the AirWorks conference, two days of meetings, keynotes and networking between industry experts, organized by DJI in the city of Nevada to showcase the latest innovations in commercial drones. Knols, who founded the Culex startup in the Maldives, is primarily a mosquito expert and a malariologist, with a long experience in the fight against malaria in Africa. He has also successfully used drones in Zanzibar to kill Anopheles larvae in rice fields. The results of the experiment, summarized in a recently published study, exceeded expectations.
“WHO has always maintained that carpet spraying against malaria is not a viable strategy, as it would require excessive human effort and resources,” Knols explained. “This study shows that it can be done: just use drones”.
The experiment conducted in Zanzibar: drones were used to locate the marshes and for aerial spraying.
The aircraft used by Knols in the Maldives and Zanzibar is the Agras T30, a spraying drone marketed by DJI Agriculture. Founded in 2012, DJI’s primary sector subsidiary is now present in over one hundred countries, has sold more than 200,000 drones and has an annual turnover of around half a billion dollars. In Las Vegas it presented a new folding model, the Agras T40. It is the largest commercial drone in the world: it has a 40 liter tank and can lift up to 50 kg. It joins the drones of the Mavic 3 Enterprise series and those of the DJI M series, professional quadcopters that together with monitoring and mapping software DJI’s 2D and 3D aerial make up the Chinese manufacturer’s range for commercial use.
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Commercial applications of drones
Apart from cinema and photography, which remain the main application, drones now play a fundamental role in many production sectors. They are used for the technical inspections of industrial plants or large infrastructures, such as bridges and viaducts. They help in the maintenance of refineries, platforms and extraction sites. Installers of photovoltaic systems use them to map the exposure of the roofs of houses, surveyors and geologists use them to map the territory.
The drones of the Mavic 3 Enterprise series
They have long been important allies also for firefighters and law enforcement agencies, who use them for first aid, to support personnel in interventions and search operations, or for the management of accidents. In normal times, the AirWorks conference would have been the territory of engineers and quadcopter experts, but this time DJI wanted to put the spotlight on rescue and safety.
The accusations of the US government
The intention, as in the case of Professor Knols, is to show stories of those who use drones not for professional applications tout-court, but also and above all to save lives. It’s a tried and tested marketing strategy, but one that has recently come up against US accusations: since December 2021 DJI has been blacklisted of foreign companies that American companies cannot do business with, and a few days ago it ended up in a list of names that, according to the Department of Defense, have ties to the Chinese military.
“In Washington they can think what they want, but with my team we have saved lives precisely because the Matrice M30 drone allows us to operate in extreme conditions,” says Kyle Nordfors, aircraft pilot and coordinator of drone operators at the office. Sheriff’s Office of Weber County, Utah. Almost two meters tall, shoulders of a bodybuilder, he is the epitome of the pragmatic American and all in one piece. “I don’t give a damn that a drone is Chinese if it helps me find the missing people better than a lower quality American product.”
DJI Matrix M30
Blacklisting companies with potential military ties prevents Department of Defense-controlled entities from acquiring DJI drones for their own operations. For now, it does not affect marketing and distribution to individuals in the US, where according to sector analysts the Chinese company holds about 80% of the market.
“There is no real purchase veto yet, but they are making our lives impossible with these decisions. In funding applications, mentioning DJI drones can already be a problem today, ”explains Chief Richard Fields IV, head of the Los Angeles Fire Department. He is at the AirWorks conference to talk about how drones have revolutionized the work of his teams, improving not only the effectiveness of the intervention, but also the safety of the firefighters. “When it comes to a burning house or building, the view from above allows us to better organize the action. In the case of forest fires, a serious problem in California, drones are essential to show the fronts of the flames and understand how they move ”.
Military supplies
But how has DJI managed to conquer an almost monopolistic position in the global market for multirotor drones in recent years? First of all, there is the price issue: the cost of acquiring and maintaining DJI drones has been falling steadily for some years, despite very rapid innovation cycles, typical of an expanding sector. Then there is the ecosystem: drones, especially professional ones, can be customized with third-party mapping software, or equipped with accessories that enable new features. The competition has given its share, with several companies that have preferred the more profitable military sector to the commercial one. This is the case of the French Parrot, which is now dedicating itself to supplies (yes, overt and ascertained) for the French army through a US subsidiary, Parrot Anafi USA. Even for the American Skydio, which controls a small slice of the commercial drone market, the turnover is largely due to supply contracts for the US military.
Come Huawei?
“I don’t know if DJI builds drones for the military in China, but if we talk about national security risks, I don’t understand what the problem is for rescuers and law enforcement,” says Chief Fields. “We are afraid that a control center Chinese watch us put out a fire or save the life of a missing person? “
The impression is that the Biden administration’s script on the DJI affair is similar to that followed by the Trump government in the case of Huawei, although there are important differences. First of all, DJI does not have a critical dependence on US suppliers, such as Google for Huawei. Then it does not deal with strategic infrastructures, such as mobile networks for 5G. Finally, DJI has on its side the testimonies and support of “civil servants” above all suspicion, such as Chief Fields, Kyle Nordfors and many others, who do not want to be forced to buy “inferior” products only on the basis of the nationality of membership of the manufacturer.
The Pentagon contradicts itself
Independent audits so far have produced no evidence of the military collusion DJI is accused of. On the other hand, they confirmed that the company’s drones used in the US and Europe do not send any type of data to China: the data moves between servers and datacenters located in America or Europe. Not only that: an internal report from the Pentagon, in early 2021, had confirmed that DJI’s drones used by American government agencies did not carry any risk of Chinese interference, and were indeed recommended for use.
Six months later, the Pentagon took it all back, saying an investigation was underway into the leaking of that first “bad” report. Meanwhile in Congress and in the Senate, a large group of bipartisan politicians continued to keep the tension high, until they were blacklisted in recent days. The lobbying efforts of DJI, which in 2022 already invested nearly $ 700,000 to plead its case in Washington, did nothing. “We are an easy target, after all. On the one hand there is a natural distrust of flying robots equipped with video cameras, on the other a starting bias against any Chinese activity,” explains Adam Welsh, DJI Global Head of Policy. “I think things will get a little worse before they get better. It will take time.”
Canned drones
Welsh’s work in focuses on global regulation. For professional drones the central node is now the regulations for BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) applications, i.e. autonomous and automated flight, pre-programmed or controlled by a remote operator. Right here in Las Vegas, DJI presented its “Dock” as a world premiere, a 90 kg box that can house a Matrice M30 drone, protect it from the elements, manage its take-off, mission and return independently.
With DJI Dock, drones do (almost) everything by themselves
Initially the uses of the Dock will be limited to operations in remote and inaccessible places, where sending human operators is both expensive and very risky. The use of an automated drone can speed up critical operations that today require a lot of time and resources, such as the identification of containers in ports and railway terminals, or the first intervention in case of accidents or breakdowns in large industrial complexes.
“Here in the United States we are moving forward by dint of exceptions to existing rules, but we are working on federal legislation that includes the most recent use cases,” concludes Welsh. “Europe is ahead, the regulatory framework it’s already there. After all, your dialogue with the institutions and the legislator is more sober and linear than in the United States. We can reason on the basis of facts and not of inferences “.