Parrot Anafi AI is a 4G drone with a striking style and 3D vision
Parrot has a new drone, but the French company is truly more precisely you think of Anafi AI new as a 4G flying robot. Tapping cellular data for a better cellular range, wider, and a new 3D vision system for obstacle avoidance, the other AI Anafi is another open-source platform that effectively changes the drone into a flying computer for surveys, research, and others.
It doesn’t look like most drones, almost insects from a few angles, with Parrot gold and bronze that detailed changes that cannot be used – but are not favored – from the norm. Four rotor arms are folded for portability – collapse Anafi Ai down from 320 x 440 x 118 mm to 304 x 130 x 118 mm – and weigh 1.98 pounds. Parrot said it was ready to fly in 60 seconds.
It will fly up to 34 MPH, up to 32 minutes with a 6,800 mAh battery fee, and IPX3 rain resistance.
What distinguishes Anafi AI from many other drones is how to connect to the controller – and into the cloud. Parrot has been baked in a 4G LTE modem; The pilot can add their own SIM data, and then enjoy longer control, non-line-of-sight. “It’s very much about making a long-term, autonomous mission,” Chris Roberts, VP Parrot and head of sales and marketing, explained, “But do that in a very simple way of a user perspective.”
Anafi AI can also use WiFi, but Parrot sees 4G as a factor of release here. This must mean a greater flexibility even with buildings and other objects between drones and operators, with the system automatically checking the optimization of links about every 100ms. If the 4G network slows down, or cuts at all, the wifi will take over the assumption it is within reach.
If not within reach, drone behavior can be adjusted. It can return home, for example, fly back to the takeoff position, or you can adjust it to go somewhere else.
Sometimes, of course, you will not manually set at all. “We have studied object avoidance for several years,” Roberts said. “We are not a company attached to the product for the sake of the product. Need to do something, and I need to do something well.”
The patriot approach is different from a rival 360-degree sensor suite like Skydio uses. Anafi Ai takes inspiration from binocular vision in the animal kingdom – “You don’t need the eye behind your head,” Roberts argues, “because you look around and change direction” – with an array of 3D cameras that can look completely up or down. What they see is forwarded to AI onboard, which is responsible for avoiding collisions.
As for the main camera, it is a 48 megapixel sensor installed at 6 axis dreads. It is able to reach 60fps 4K arrests with HDR10, and also package 6x zoom. Parrot said that it could see 1cm of detail from 75 meters (240 feet) away.
The operator will, of course, can control the camera manually, but Anafi AI is also designed to conduct autonometic autonomy. It can capture 48 megapixels in 1fps, with the accuracy of the survey class 0.46cm / px GSD at 30 meters. The concept is that it can be sent to bridges, buildings, construction sites, or whatever needs to be captured digitally, and then allowed to collect all the data you want.
What makes Anafi Ai apart is that you don’t need to wait until the drone has returned to see the results. While of course there is a direct video flow from the camera to the controller, the 4G LTE Parrot connection means that the drone can immediately start uploading data to Pix4DCloud, the company’s cloud-based platform, through an encrypted link.
The drone has a safe chip specifically for public and private keys, and every photo dataset has a digital signature that cannot be modified without authorization. But Parrot will also have a new air SDK, which will allow developers to make applications running directly to Anafi AI and tap all hardware and software.
Wind turbine companies, for example, can develop specialist survey software that guides