DJI has been conducting various drone tests, but sending its EV50 delivery drone to the world’s tallest mountain peak is a serious achievement. Maybe there’s something in the wind that’s sending tech to Mount Everest. A Unitree robot is supposed to get there (eventually) as well.
The Chinese drone-maker’s efforts with its EV50 eVTOL delivery drone are just part of a larger effort that saw the company’s other drones also working in the area. The DJI FlyCart 100 and Matrice 4E also handled tasks at Mount Qomolangma (or Sagarmāthā, depending on who you reckon Everest belongs to).
Drop and give me EV50
DJI has conducted tests at Everest, according to the company, since 2009. That began with an unmanned helicopter with the company’s XP3.1 flight control system. Subsequent tests involved another flight control system, the Mavic 3, and the FlyCart 30. The most recent outing saw the DJI FlyCart 100 moving loads of 47 kilograms to heights of 6.3 kilometres.
DJI said that “10,073 kg of supplies and waste were carried between Base Camp and Camp 1 – of which, 7,215 kg were climbing supplies and 2,858 kg were waste removed from the mountain.” A single flight between locations took eight minutes. Presumably there was loading and offloading time involved as well.
The DJI Matrice 4E reached heights of 6.45 kilometres and functioned as part of a mapping effort on the mountain. But the big one, DJI’s EV50, had more ambitious goals. The unmanned drone carried “ozone-measuring equipment from the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at Peking University.” Its best flight reached 8.86 kilometres. Overall, the EV50 helped to “conduct fine-scale observations of atmospheric pollutants in the ultra-high-altitude troposphere.”
DJI plans to continue operations on Everest. The FlyCart 100 is set to deliver oxygen bottles to locations around the mountain during climbing season. The Matrice 4E‘s terrain mapping features are supposedly going to help to make ascents (and descents) safer for climbers overall. As for the big boy? The company hasn’t said what it’ll be doing next, but a continued partnership with Peking University seems likely. Suddenly, a farming-specific drone doesn’t seem like it’s very far-fetched. That’s… probably the point of exercises like these. That, and trash cleanup.
