Former Drone Rivals DJI, 3D Robotics Link Product Offerings

Two companies once poised as rivals in the early days of the small-drone industry have linked their product offerings aimed at architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) companies.

In a blog post on August 1, 3D Robotics (3DR) of Berkeley, California, said its “Site Scan” aerial data software platform now works with drones manufactured by Shenzhen, China-based DJI. 3DR’s own Solo quadcopter was the original host platform for the analytical software.

The latter combination is distinguished for having performed the first FAA-approved commercial drone operation in Class B airspace on January 10, when design and engineering firm Atkins used the Solo to survey a parking garage demolition site at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Combining Site Scan with flying machines from DJI—the acknowledged market leader for small drones—marked an “historic day,” said 3DR, which simultaneously unveiled a new “Enterprise Atlas” data access, storage and support platform for large construction and engineering companies using drones.

DJI director of strategic partnerships Michael Perry stated: “This integration is a significant milestone for the AEC industry. We’re excited that 3DR Site Scan users can now use DJI drones to convert images into actionable data that helps project stakeholders save time and manage costs.”

The two companies weren’t always friendly. In April 2015, 3DR, a company co-founded by former Wired magazine editor, author and entrepreneur Chris Anderson, introduced Solo as its first consumer drone offering, presenting competition for DJI’s dominant Phantom quadcopter.

But Solo came late to the market, was occasionally unreliable and initially arrived without a camera gimbal because of production delays. The misfire caused 3DR to burn through more than $100 million in venture capital and lay off 150 employees, Forbes reported in October. The company then changed its business model to focus on software. In April this year, 3DR said it had raised $53 million in a Series D funding round, which it planned to use toward further developing the Site Scan aerial data platform.

Anderson recalled the Solo experience in a blog post he wrote on August 2, announcing that 3DR has released Solo software code as open-source code.

“When we launched Solo back in 2015, one of its selling points was that it was based on the open source ArduPilot software,” he said. “The point of Solo was to package up this open stack in a polished, easy-to-use consumer product, treating the ArduPilot stack as an ‘open core’ and extending its functionality with proprietary features much as companies do with Linux-based devices.”

Anderson continued: “This worked very well as a product (Solo had some really innovative features, some of which are still unequaled) but less well as a business (we couldn’t make it cheaply enough to keep up with the rapid price declines in the consumer market, so we stopped making them at the end of 2015). Now, two years later, 3DR has shifted its focus to the commercial market that exploded after the FAA launched its Part 107 commercial operator licensing program last year. But there are lots of Solos still out there, with great untapped potential—it’s just not our core business anymore.”