3D Robotics is betting Solo will appeal to drone enthusiasts and novices alike — and that it can begin to chip away at the consumer drone market that the Phantom helped create. It is a critical time for 3DR, which has raised $85 million from investors.
“We are a player, but we are the underdog player,” says 3DR’s Colin Guinn. “How big of a defining moment is it? It is the moment. This is the introduction to the world of 3DR.”
Guinn came to 3DR from DJI, where he was CEO of DJI’s North American division. He helped lead design and marketing efforts for the Phantom, the Chinese company’s hugely popular consumer model. Thanks in part to a series of popular YouTube videos where Guinn showed off the Phantom’s capabilities, he became well known to hobbyists.
But Guinn’s relationship with DJI executives in China soured over business terms, lawsuits were filed, and last February he decamped with his team for 3DR. (Guinn declines to comment on the lawsuit, which was settled.) Now at 3DR, Guinn’s official title is chief revenue officer. But his role at the company is much larger than the bean-counter title suggests: the new Solo drone is his baby, 3.3 pounds of precision-engineered flying plastic robot.
And even all that doesn’t really get at the main thing about Colin Guinn, which is that he is obsessed with drones. Because he once ran an aerial photography company, shooting scenes for Hollywood films, Guinn has an all-encompassing knowledge about how to make movies in the sky. When he speaks, what comes across is this overwhelming sense that to own a drone is to have a superpower — and that if you could only master that power, you could bend the universe a little more exactly to your will.
He mentions the history of comic book and fantasy characters who have the ability to see the world through the eyes of a bird. “What is the difference between those powers and Solo, with a high-definition video feed coming from the GoPro?” Guinn asks. “We’re basically giving people a superhuman power for a thousand bucks.”
3DR unveiled Solo at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas, and it will begin shipping in a few weeks. For a base price of $999, with an optional $399 gimbal for enhanced camera controls, Solo is the first drone to offer full control of a GoPro camera. (I asked GoPro what they liked so much about Solo, and they sent back a bone-dry statement that didn’t really answer the question — I assume because they worried about offending their other partners.) But the integration turns out to be a big deal: with Solo you can start and stop recordings, or change the camera’s frame rate or other settings while in flight. It’s stuff filmmakers have been asking for forever.
Most drones use a single computer, located in the flying unit, and broadcast signals to it using a controller. Solo, on the other hand, has 1 Ghz processors in both the controller and the quadcopter. The processor on the quadcopter is devoted entirely to autopilot functions necessary to keep it aloft. Meanwhile, the controller serves as Solo’s “frontal cortex,” and operates higher-level functions — some of which will arrive through future software updates. (My favourite of these, which I used in a test unit, is a flight “rewind” feature — simply tap and hold the “pause” button, which normally functions as a kind of emergency brake, and Solo retraces its steps. It’s expected to ship within 60 days from launch.)
The Solo app will warn you when your battery is running low, flying home automatically to ensure you make it on time. (You can override the feature, but the controller will start vibrating until you land safely.) 3DR is also rolling out the world’s most expansive customer service program for drone owners, for a product where service has been downright medieval. (Drone drop into the ocean? Sorry about that! Feel free to buy another.)
It’s the first drone to offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with your purchase; you’ll just have to complete a five-question survey, providing data 3DR will use to improve future versions. Meanwhile, a team of nearly 100 in-house technicians will respond to calls for help, using the data that Solo continuously logs during flights.
The Solo app detects crashes and will ask you if you want to submit a trouble ticket in the event something goes wrong. If it’s your fault, 3DR will offer to sell you a refurbished unit at a lower cost. And if the flight logs show Solo was at fault, 3DR will replace your drone — along with your gimbal and GoPro, if they also perished — at no cost.
Source: The Verge