Drone News: New Bill to Ban Chinese Drones, DJI Matrice 3D Leaks, and Zipline's New Partnerships.

Welcome to your weekly news update, we have 3 stories for you
this week, New bill proposes banning Chinese drones for the
Federal Government, DJI Matrice 3D leaks, and Zipline’s new
partnerships with Healthcare in Ohio. Make your voice heard:
https://droneadvocacyalliance.com/?vvsrc=%2Fcampaigns%2F105982%2Frespond





First up this week is a “new” bill that would prohibit the
Federal Government from purchasing Chinese Drones, again… To be
clear, this is a reintroduction of a past, failed bill. Florida
Senator Rick Scott introduced the American Safety Drone Act in
the Senate and now Representative Gallagher from Wisconsin is now
doing the same in the House. This new bill is set to be announced
this week, and would prohibit the federal government from using
any tax dollars to purchase UAV equipment from China. The bill
would require a federal report detailing the number of foreign
commercial drones and “Covered” unmanned aircraft procured by
federal departments. At the non-federal level, the bill would
also bar local and state governments from purchasing Chinese
drones using federal grants. Both Scott, in the past, and
Gallagher now are trying to attach this to the National Defense
Authorization Act, which is the only likely way for it to advance
since it’s highly unlikely to move on its own. Once again we see
a country of origin ban rather than a set of comprehensive
standards that any drone used for government purposes must
conform to. The best way to fight this is to use the DAA’s link
in the description for instructions on reaching out to your
representatives and oppose the National Defense Authorization
Act. Next up this week are some DJI leaks, for the Matrice 3D.
New pictures of the drone and new pictures of the rumored DJI
Dock Mini. As we covered previously, the Matrice 3D appears to be
a simplified DJI Mavic 3 Thermal with fixed arms, top-mounted SDK
port and mounting, and built-in RTK. New leaks about the Mini
Dock appears to shows an angled channel that the Matrice 3D would
fit into in contrast to the flat landing pad of the existing DJI
dock. The M3D also appears to be slightly larger than the Mavic 3
with much thicker arms and larger propellers. Pretty cool
innovations coming from DJI, we’ll see if this is released any
time soon! Lastly this week is an announcement from Zipline, who
has partnered with a number of healthcare providers in Ohio and
Michigan. Zipline announced in September that they’d gotten FAA
permission to operate BVLOS without visual observers, and now
they appear to be ready to use that permission. Partnerships
include the Cleveland Clinic, Michigan Medicine, Intermountain
Healthcare, and Ohio Health. With these new partnerships, Zipline
aims to deliver prescriptions directly to a home’s front door by
2025. The Zipline P2 system cruises at 70 mph, an altitude of 300
feet and uses a small “droid” to drop packages in places where
the main aircraft can’t get to. Pretty cool tech! That’s it! Have
a great week and we’ll see you for our live on Monday on our
airplane channel!
https://dronexl.co/2023/10/31/zipline-drones-deliver-meds/
https://www.flyzipline.com/newsroom/news/announcements/faa-authorizes-zipline-to-fly-bvlos
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-house-panel-seeks-ban-federal-purchases-chinese-drones-ft-2023-11-01/
https://dronexl.co/2023/10/30/dji-matrice-3d-dock-mini/
https://dronexl.co/2023/10/31/dji-dock-mini-matrice-3d-photos/
https://droneadvocacyalliance.com/?vvsrc=%2Fcampaigns%2F105982%2Frespond