DroneDJ

DJI picked quite a day to sue. Just as Insta360 was celebrating the launch of its highly anticipated Luna Ultra camera — a Leica-powered 8K handheld gimbal camera aimed squarely at creators — DJI filed not one, but two patent infringement lawsuits accusing its fast-growing rival of copying technologies behind the Osmo Pocket lineup.

If you’ve been waiting for an excuse to try a drone without spending a fortune, DJI may have just handed you one. The company’s palm-sized Neo drone is now available at a cool discount, with all major bundles currently marked down by 15%. The deals arrive just in time for Father’s Day, and they make one of DJI’s most beginner-friendly drones even harder to ignore.

For years, creators looking for a compact stabilized camera have largely gravitated toward DJI’s Pocket series. Now, Insta360 is stepping into that space with what may be its most ambitious camera yet. The company has unveiled the Luna Ultra, a Leica co-engineered gimbal camera that combines a large 1-inch sensor, 8K video recording, AI-powered tracking, and a built-in three-axis stabilization system in a device small enough to fit in your pocket.

The future of drone-powered railway inspections may not involve a pilot standing trackside at all. UK drone solutions provider Heliguy has secured a significant Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) authorization from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), allowing it to conduct remote drone operations for rail infrastructure giant Network Rail.

DJI has quietly created one of the most confusing buying decisions in the drone industry. Not because its drones are difficult to understand, but because two of its most popular first-person view (FPV) models now appeal to completely different types of users despite looking remarkably similar on paper.

Clever Supply Co. is a leather camera strap and bag company, not a drone brand. They sent over their Camera Sling V2 in tan along with one of their leather camera straps for me to review. For the record, they didn’t pay for this and didn’t get to see the video or this article before it went up — everything here is our own honest take.

Want to know where the drone industry is headed next? The people behind one of the sector’s most influential research efforts are asking drone professionals around the world to help answer that question.

For drone survey teams working across sprawling mines, oil pipelines, and remote geological sites, one frustrating problem has lingered for years: breaking huge survey areas into manageable flight sections without creating alignment issues that can ruin data quality. Now, SPH Engineering says it has solved that challenge with the launch of UgCS 6.0, a major update to its popular enterprise drone flight planning platform.

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively placed nearly all foreign-produced drones on its national security “Covered List” late last year, many drone pilots feared the door was closing on a huge portion of the industry. Instead, a different story is now emerging.

Wall Street just got its first real chance to bet directly on drone delivery. Matternet, a company that has spent more than a decade building delivery drones and flying thousands of commercial missions, has raised $33 million in fresh funding while becoming the first publicly reporting company focused exclusively on drone delivery. The announcement comes as industry leaders increasingly argue that widespread drone deliveries are moving from experiment to reality.

As pressure mounts for secure, American-made drone technology, Mobix Labs is making a significant bet on the future of the industry. The California-based technology company announced it has signed a binding Letter of Intent to acquire Vision Aerial, a Montana drone manufacturer whose aircraft are already used by military, public safety, energy, and critical infrastructure organizations across the United States.

For decades, archaeologists knew something extraordinary was hiding beneath the dense rainforests of northern Guatemala. The challenge wasn’t finding clues. It was seeing through a jungle so thick that much of what remained of the ancient Maya world was effectively invisible. Now, a combination of cutting-edge drone technology and LiDAR scanning is helping researchers uncover what may be one of the most important archaeological stories of our time.

If you’ve ever arrived at a flying location only to discover another drone pilot already operating in the same area, a new feature from The Drone Map aims to make those surprises much less common.

The DJI Osmo Pocket 4 has only recently started appearing through third-party sellers for US buyers, but DJI is already trying to prevent new owners from making expensive mistakes.

Drone mapping software keeps getting better at building 3D models. But for many users, the hardest part comes afterward: figuring out what they’re looking at. That’s the problem SkyeBrowse is targeting with a major platform update that improves model quality, boosts AI-generated floor plans, and makes its Image Walkthroughs feature available to all users at no additional cost.

For years, the drone industry has focused on what aircraft can do in the sky. But a new $1.5 billion acquisition suggests the next big business opportunity may be controlling the drones you don’t want there.

Planning to fly a drone during the FIFA World Cup 2026? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has just released a list of locations where that could become a very expensive mistake, with unauthorized operators facing penalties of up to $100,000 and possible criminal prosecution.

The company behind Pokémon Go is making a major bet on drones and artificial intelligence. Niantic Spatial, the spinoff from the creator of the global mobile gaming phenomenon Pokémon Go, has partnered with Spexi, which bills itself as the world’s largest decentralized drone imagery network, to build detailed 3D maps of the real world that could help train the next generation of AI systems and robots.

For years, millions of Americans who use DJI drones have been hearing the same warning on repeat: these drones could be a national security threat. Now, DJI has fired back with what may become one of the most explosive documents in the entire US drone ban debate.

Washington’s fight over Chinese drones is no longer just a national security debate happening inside congressional hearing rooms. For thousands of Americans, it’s becoming a deeply personal issue tied to jobs, emergency response, roof inspections, farming operations, photography businesses, and even search-and-rescue missions.

The professional drone industry has spent years chasing a simple goal: making one drone capable of handling many different missions without sending operators back to the workshop every time they need a new tool. Now, UK drone provider Coptrz says it’s bringing exactly that capability to British operators through a new exclusive partnership with Norway’s Tundra Drone.

Washington may want America to move beyond DJI, but one big question keeps hanging over the debate: who can realistically replace the company’s affordable, widely used drones at the same scale?

As police departments across the US rapidly expand drone programs, one challenge is becoming harder to ignore: crowded low-altitude airspace. From authorized emergency-response drones to rogue aircraft flying near sensitive locations, agencies increasingly need better visibility into what’s happening overhead.

The City of Dallas is officially putting drones on the front lines of emergency response, and in some cases, they may arrive before police officers or firefighters do.