DJI M100 with Collision Avoidance System

# DJI’s New Developer Platform: The Matrix 100 Quadcopter and Its Revolutionary Features

In a recent outdoor demonstration, Eric Chang of DJI introduced the latest addition to their product lineup: the **Matrix 100**, a developer-focused quadcopter designed to push the boundaries of drone technology. This new platform represents a natural progression in the evolution of drones, moving beyond consumer-facing products and into more specialized, customizable applications.

## Introducing the Matrix 100: A Developer’s Best Friend

The **Matrix 100** is a compact quadcopter measuring 650mm in size, designed to provide maximum flexibility for developers and innovators. It comes equipped with modular batteries (supporting up to two batteries), a built-in LightBridge system, and a camera mount compatible with the X3 camera seen earlier with the Inspire series. The platform is entirely SDK-driven, allowing developers to code directly against it and customize its functionality according to their needs.

One of the standout features of the Matrix 100 is its **modularity**, which enables users to attach various payloads such as additional cameras, sensors, or other accessories. This makes it a versatile tool for industries ranging from precision agriculture to commercial cinematography. The quadcopter’s design ensures that developers can experiment and innovate without being constrained by pre-set limitations.

## The Guidance System: Obstacle Avoidance Redefined

A major highlight of the Matrix 100 is its advanced **Guidance system**, a cutting-edge sensor package that offers active obstacle avoidance capabilities. This system builds on the Visual Positioning System (VPS) used in the Inspire series, which combined ultrasonic sensors with optical flow for enhanced stability and navigation.

The Guidance system takes this further by incorporating **stereo cameras** and an upgraded ultrasonic system, providing a 3D reconstruction of the environment and depth mapping capabilities. This allows the drone to actively avoid objects and maintain safe distances from people or obstacles, even in dynamic environments. For example, if someone approaches the drone, it can detect their presence and move away accordingly.

The Guidance system is not limited to DJI products; its SDK opens up possibilities for integration with third-party sensors and devices. This makes it a powerful tool for developers looking to create custom solutions for various industries.

## Tech Demos: Pushing Boundaries with New Inputs

To showcase the potential of the Matrix 100, DJI demonstrated two exciting tech projects developed in collaboration with Spark Aerial:

### 1. **Oculus Rift Integration**

The first demo involved integrating the **Oculus Rift** into the system to control the camera gimbal on the Matrix 100. By leveraging the quadcopter’s SDK, developers were able to connect the Rift’s head-tracking movement directly to the gimbal’s movements, allowing for intuitive and immersive camera control. This innovation could revolutionize cinematography by enabling operators to manipulate the camera without traditional controls, opening up new creative possibilities in filming.

### 2. **Leap Motion Hand Controls**

The second demo showcased the use of the **Leap Motion** device to fly the Matrix 100 using hand gestures. By simulating an aircraft with hand movements, developers demonstrated how users could pitch, tilt, and maneuver the drone intuitively. This hands-free approach to flight control opens up new possibilities for inspections, surveillance, and other applications where physical controls might be impractical or unsafe.

These demos highlight the potential of the Matrix 100 as a platform for innovation, allowing developers to experiment with a wide range of inputs and interfaces.

## Availability and SDK Access

The **Matrix 100** will soon be available through DJI’s standard distribution channels, including online outlets and authorized dealers. Alongside the hardware, DJI is also making its SDKs more accessible to developers. The Inspire 1 and Phantom 3 SDKs, which have been in beta for some time, will now be released alongside the Matrix 100’s SDK.

The process of porting software between different DJI platforms has been simplified, enabling developers to share code across devices with minimal effort. This cross-platform compatibility further underscores DJI’s commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration within the developer community.

## Conclusion

The **Matrix 100** represents a significant step forward in drone technology, offering developers a powerful platform to experiment and innovate. With its advanced Guidance system, modular design, and customizable SDK, this quadcopter opens up new possibilities for industries ranging from cinematography to precision agriculture. As demonstrated by the integration of cutting-edge technologies like Oculus Rift and Leap Motion, the Matrix 100 is truly a tool for the future—one that will enable developers to push the boundaries of what drones can do.

For those interested in getting started with the Matrix 100 or DJI’s SDKs, visit their official website at [dev.dji.com](https://dev.dji.com) to apply for access and explore the endless potential of this groundbreaking platform.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's known from testing I'm outdoors today with Eric Chang of DJI now we've shown a bunch of DJI products before on the site quad copters I'm sure you guys know but today we're look a little different a little less consumer-facing but kind of a natural progression for where these quad copters are going to be in the next five to ten years well this month basically well you have to show two there yeah so we've actually kind of gone back to our roots and we have a developer platform kit which is called the matrix 100 or the M 100 it's right here in front of you and it's a 650 sized developer quadcopter that comes with a lot of different options for maximum flexibility and development so fundamentally it's made to work with our SDK so you're going to be coding against this platform but it comes with modular batteries so up to two batteries support built-in light bridge obviously a camera mount for the x3 camera that you saw released with the inspire initially and brand new a new sensitive void system called guidance now this is also a really big deal I know a lot of people have flown for example your fan ohms and even inspire Adam loves is but the thing we're was afraid of is losing control of it or it hitting something you don't see you don't notice now with the guidance system you're talking about actual active avoidance of obstacles how does that work right so guidance you can see right here on the front and on all sides and also on the bottom so on the inspire one we released visual positioning system or VPS so this was ultrasonic plus optical flow so it had a single optical camera plus ultrasonic send and receive sensors now you'll see here we have a upgraded ultrasonic system so it's much more powerful and we also have stereo cameras so what guidance gives you is the ability to see first of all it tells you what objects are in front of it it also gives you access to a depth map stereo grayscale images and also of course the ultrasonic information looks like you have five different of these guidance optical systems on here and with stereo you know two cameras you're not only like from stead of looking at the ground we are used analogy before I got mouse an optical mouse tracking the movement but if you're flying a quadcopter against a wall or something and you're moving toward it you're going to need the dual cameras to kind of gauge distance yeah you pretty much it's the combination of multiple sensors that makes it powerful so ultrasonic gives you that discreet bounce you know an echo off of an object that's close by and then the stereo cameras gives you basically 3d reconstruction of the area so it's really meant for object avoidance but it can keep I mean we've seen accuracy as much as tight as you know one centimeter so the sensors are pretty good and will demo a little bit later but what you see is if you try to fly it into a person for example it will just stop and if then you walk towards it it will move away from you so in the programming consider radius for example and say that if it the quadcopter thinks it gets within 4 or 5 feet of a person or any object any moving object even it will just resist and won't even fly even if you're pushing throttle all the way right so there's a sensitivity control and again this is just the way we have it configured here which is to avoid objects but there's an open SDK and guidance so it doesn't only work with our products you know guidances will really exist as a sensor package with an SDK now you mentioned that it's also modular it looks like something could attach other things on other cameras on you so maybe in more batteries what other type of payloads could you put on this so I mean we've designed to carry multiple payloads in that you can put multiple batteries of course guidance things like that when we have come up with ways to mount them but it's really designed so you can mount anything you'd like so the most obvious thing is more cameras so because we have lightbridge integrated that means you can mount your own camera and what people have been most interested in are things like near-infrared infrared mostly for precision agriculture and other commercial commercial endeavors but you can plug basically plug any kind of HDMI video signal or analog video signal and it integrates either into the DJI pilot app which is the same app used to run inspire and phantom 3 but is also available to the SDK so HDMI plugs into onto the board here that sends it over light Bridge getting that same digital signal relatively low latency right into the app you don't have to have separate monitors or anything right now you're also announcing SDKs we know there was a phantom to SDK some people have created some really interesting apps with that but for the inspire and the Phantom 3 what's the SDK situation with us so the the inspire 1 and the Phantom 3 SDK have been in beta for quite some time now and along with the shipping of them 100 those SDKs will become available as well as the SDK for the M 100 and they're all there pretty close to each other so we've seen and we'll see it here in a minute but porting back and forth seems to be pretty easy so let's get demo of some of interesting things you guys have done with the M 100 ready all right sounds good all right so this is radley angela radley of spark arial you're one of the developers that DJI brought in to experiment with the SDK and the M 100 now what have you and your team been able to do with it and the time that it yeah so in just a couple short days we've actually had a lot of sort of ideas about what we wanted to do with the SDK and this platform we brought out two different activations today the first one is the oculus rift so with all the new software access that we have we were able to connect the oculus the head tracking movement to the movement of the gimbal on a m100 so take the m100 up right now I promise you it's safe yeah and it has the same camera gimbal system as the inspire one Eric you're wearing the oculus right now and I think you guys can see out there yeah you move around because there is such a wide turning radius with the camera your look around so the idea is that when you're flying you're able to bend control the camera as opposed to using either a transmitter or even the app right touching the screen just with motion control for so many different people I mean like cinematography instead of having the second radio you could have somebody just wearing this for things like inspection if you wanted to park the aircraft but still be able to move the camera in a very fluid way and the oculus is a perfect fit for that it really just opens up a whole new world of being able to control you know the camera and the gimbal movement that's that was the idea I know you have this working on the m100 now but because the SDKs are similar is that something that could also be ported then to the inspire yeah we've actually tested on the inspire and it works great so you can directly connect this stuff with very few changes to actually get it to work out the inspire one okay so what's the second tech demo right so the second tech demo is actually the leap motion which is this little box here and what it is is it's flight control using just your hand an elite motion to actually fly the aircraft so while the oculus lets you control the camera movement moving your hand on top of the leap I'm sort of imitating an aircraft you can actually fly the m100 so I have a little demo setup for you guys but essentially if you think your hand as the aircraft you can pitch it forward you can tilt it back you can go higher you can go lower so you don't need to do anything with the to stick setup you can just sort of use your hand as the control interface that's just an example of something you can do exactly and it's up to people who want to use this commercially to figure out what's gonna be best for them having less integrated camera systems and control systems yeah and top of the SDK we like the leap motion just because it's something that we could just sort of use out of the box but you could imagine any sensor there or anything that you want it to interface with as a way of like controlling flight that was the opening up the possibilities is the idea awesome thank you very much yeah of course alright Eric thank you so much for showing us the m100 what's availability gonna be like for this in the SDK so the m100 will be available everywhere our products are sold so that would be our normal dealers plus online outlets and the sdk is available by going to dev DJI comm you do have to apply for sdk access but it's pretty easy to do awesome thank you so much and we love flying with you guys a lot thank you byeit's known from testing I'm outdoors today with Eric Chang of DJI now we've shown a bunch of DJI products before on the site quad copters I'm sure you guys know but today we're look a little different a little less consumer-facing but kind of a natural progression for where these quad copters are going to be in the next five to ten years well this month basically well you have to show two there yeah so we've actually kind of gone back to our roots and we have a developer platform kit which is called the matrix 100 or the M 100 it's right here in front of you and it's a 650 sized developer quadcopter that comes with a lot of different options for maximum flexibility and development so fundamentally it's made to work with our SDK so you're going to be coding against this platform but it comes with modular batteries so up to two batteries support built-in light bridge obviously a camera mount for the x3 camera that you saw released with the inspire initially and brand new a new sensitive void system called guidance now this is also a really big deal I know a lot of people have flown for example your fan ohms and even inspire Adam loves is but the thing we're was afraid of is losing control of it or it hitting something you don't see you don't notice now with the guidance system you're talking about actual active avoidance of obstacles how does that work right so guidance you can see right here on the front and on all sides and also on the bottom so on the inspire one we released visual positioning system or VPS so this was ultrasonic plus optical flow so it had a single optical camera plus ultrasonic send and receive sensors now you'll see here we have a upgraded ultrasonic system so it's much more powerful and we also have stereo cameras so what guidance gives you is the ability to see first of all it tells you what objects are in front of it it also gives you access to a depth map stereo grayscale images and also of course the ultrasonic information looks like you have five different of these guidance optical systems on here and with stereo you know two cameras you're not only like from stead of looking at the ground we are used analogy before I got mouse an optical mouse tracking the movement but if you're flying a quadcopter against a wall or something and you're moving toward it you're going to need the dual cameras to kind of gauge distance yeah you pretty much it's the combination of multiple sensors that makes it powerful so ultrasonic gives you that discreet bounce you know an echo off of an object that's close by and then the stereo cameras gives you basically 3d reconstruction of the area so it's really meant for object avoidance but it can keep I mean we've seen accuracy as much as tight as you know one centimeter so the sensors are pretty good and will demo a little bit later but what you see is if you try to fly it into a person for example it will just stop and if then you walk towards it it will move away from you so in the programming consider radius for example and say that if it the quadcopter thinks it gets within 4 or 5 feet of a person or any object any moving object even it will just resist and won't even fly even if you're pushing throttle all the way right so there's a sensitivity control and again this is just the way we have it configured here which is to avoid objects but there's an open SDK and guidance so it doesn't only work with our products you know guidances will really exist as a sensor package with an SDK now you mentioned that it's also modular it looks like something could attach other things on other cameras on you so maybe in more batteries what other type of payloads could you put on this so I mean we've designed to carry multiple payloads in that you can put multiple batteries of course guidance things like that when we have come up with ways to mount them but it's really designed so you can mount anything you'd like so the most obvious thing is more cameras so because we have lightbridge integrated that means you can mount your own camera and what people have been most interested in are things like near-infrared infrared mostly for precision agriculture and other commercial commercial endeavors but you can plug basically plug any kind of HDMI video signal or analog video signal and it integrates either into the DJI pilot app which is the same app used to run inspire and phantom 3 but is also available to the SDK so HDMI plugs into onto the board here that sends it over light Bridge getting that same digital signal relatively low latency right into the app you don't have to have separate monitors or anything right now you're also announcing SDKs we know there was a phantom to SDK some people have created some really interesting apps with that but for the inspire and the Phantom 3 what's the SDK situation with us so the the inspire 1 and the Phantom 3 SDK have been in beta for quite some time now and along with the shipping of them 100 those SDKs will become available as well as the SDK for the M 100 and they're all there pretty close to each other so we've seen and we'll see it here in a minute but porting back and forth seems to be pretty easy so let's get demo of some of interesting things you guys have done with the M 100 ready all right sounds good all right so this is radley angela radley of spark arial you're one of the developers that DJI brought in to experiment with the SDK and the M 100 now what have you and your team been able to do with it and the time that it yeah so in just a couple short days we've actually had a lot of sort of ideas about what we wanted to do with the SDK and this platform we brought out two different activations today the first one is the oculus rift so with all the new software access that we have we were able to connect the oculus the head tracking movement to the movement of the gimbal on a m100 so take the m100 up right now I promise you it's safe yeah and it has the same camera gimbal system as the inspire one Eric you're wearing the oculus right now and I think you guys can see out there yeah you move around because there is such a wide turning radius with the camera your look around so the idea is that when you're flying you're able to bend control the camera as opposed to using either a transmitter or even the app right touching the screen just with motion control for so many different people I mean like cinematography instead of having the second radio you could have somebody just wearing this for things like inspection if you wanted to park the aircraft but still be able to move the camera in a very fluid way and the oculus is a perfect fit for that it really just opens up a whole new world of being able to control you know the camera and the gimbal movement that's that was the idea I know you have this working on the m100 now but because the SDKs are similar is that something that could also be ported then to the inspire yeah we've actually tested on the inspire and it works great so you can directly connect this stuff with very few changes to actually get it to work out the inspire one okay so what's the second tech demo right so the second tech demo is actually the leap motion which is this little box here and what it is is it's flight control using just your hand an elite motion to actually fly the aircraft so while the oculus lets you control the camera movement moving your hand on top of the leap I'm sort of imitating an aircraft you can actually fly the m100 so I have a little demo setup for you guys but essentially if you think your hand as the aircraft you can pitch it forward you can tilt it back you can go higher you can go lower so you don't need to do anything with the to stick setup you can just sort of use your hand as the control interface that's just an example of something you can do exactly and it's up to people who want to use this commercially to figure out what's gonna be best for them having less integrated camera systems and control systems yeah and top of the SDK we like the leap motion just because it's something that we could just sort of use out of the box but you could imagine any sensor there or anything that you want it to interface with as a way of like controlling flight that was the opening up the possibilities is the idea awesome thank you very much yeah of course alright Eric thank you so much for showing us the m100 what's availability gonna be like for this in the SDK so the m100 will be available everywhere our products are sold so that would be our normal dealers plus online outlets and the sdk is available by going to dev DJI comm you do have to apply for sdk access but it's pretty easy to do awesome thank you so much and we love flying with you guys a lot thank you bye\n"