Behind Hangar 360 — Using the DJI SDK to Enable An Autonomous Future
At Hangar, we’re preparing for an update to our popular Hangar 360 application, as well as major product updates to our flagship Autopilot application for autonomous mission control. In this article we look back on the history our team has with the DJI SDK and how it led to the development of the Hangar 360 application tens of thousands of users use today.
The drone and aerial data landscape moves faster than any other technology in history.
The progress made in short periods of time in hardware, software and application is simply unparalleled by almost all other industries. Hangar’s story with DJI really began in winter 2014, with the first release of the DJI SDK. Our CTO Jim McAndrew (at the time an entrepreneur and mobile app developer, after holding positions in server-side development and machine learning) had recently purchased his first Phantom. Over the Christmas holiday saw that the SDK had just been released but no apps had yet been put out. Jim’s initial request for the SDK program was approved within 30 minutes on Christmas Eve, and his first application for drones launched 90 days later. Fast forward to the present: Hangar opened its doors in September 2016 to build autonomous technology for the next generation of drone applications, and one of the biggest advantages for pursuing technology in this industry was the ability to leverage the DJI SDK.
The level of control integration offered with DJI drones by the SDK, the quick support and responsiveness from the team around new features, and ability to control so many different drones through consistent parameters really levels the playing field for new companies to be able to apply new ideas and engineering talent into the drone space at scale. At Hangar, we loved that within weeks of the announcement of the new Mavic Pro, we had support within the SDK for development on that platform, and a responsive team to work through the drone and camera control intricacies of the software we were trying to build.
With the introduction of the DJI Mavic, we at Hangar saw an opening in the industry; professional image quality and sensors with complete autonomous flight possibilities, all within a simple, unobtrusive package that represents the best engineering the drone industry has to offer. We saw the opportunity this platform presents, that even more consumers and professionals across the world will be able to enter the world of autonomous flight with a lower barrier to entry and top-tier data acquisition results.
At Hangar, this led us into two development efforts. We develop and maintain the Autopilot application, the most robust ground control station for DJI drones, which currently enables over 30k users, who have conducted 200k+ autonomous flights using Autopilot technology. We knew that bringing the ability for complex, shareable autonomous and semi-autonomous missions to the Mavic would greatly expand the applications of Autopilot to consumers and professionals in the field, and immediately worked on integrating our existing flight planning software into this new platform. The small size of the Mavic also brought to mind the ability to utilize Hangar’s Airspace networked drone application for commercial inspection. We picture a future with multiple small networked drones conducting inspections on towers, turbines, bridges and more, enabled by a combination of hardware, sensors, and autonomous software coordination.
For the immediate future, we saw an opportunity for this new user base of the Mavic Pro platform to embrace a powerful technology in the drone software space in wide-scale… cloud processing and delivery of data. Several companies leverage cloud processing technology for mapping and surveying in the professional space, but at Hangar we saw the ability for consumers and professionals alike to be able to leverage the cloud to capture their work in a new and exciting medium: 360 degree images. We set out to develop Hangar 360 for the Mavic (and now a full suite of DJI drones).
Hangar 360 is a free app for drone users that allows you to easily create and share interactive 360 degree photos for use on mobile or desktop. Hangar 360 autonomously flies your DJI drone, captures the required aerial images, allows for one-touch upload to the Hangar cloud for processing, and delivers a fully stitched 360 image link back to you. Best of all it’s completely free. It’s a great opportunity for anyone with a Mavic to see Hangar’s vision for the future of automated aerial data capture.
This app development is part of Hangar’s vision for where the industry is going, enabled by the power of DJI’s hardware platforms and the connection to software and product providers like Hangar. We see autonomy at scale, tens of thousands of daily autonomous flights capturing data for industry usage worldwide. We also believe that we’re just touching on the future of cloud processing. Whether with delivering 360 images, processing orthomosaic maps, or automatic video editing software like the kind built into DJI GO, these cloud processing applications are growing in popularity and power.
At Hangar, we take this vision one step further. Autonomously captured, cloud-processed data will be able to be applied into productized interfaces that enable insight for industry. Construction sites will be able to track progress from above easily over time, infrastructure inspections will be able to be conducted autonomously and leverage not just computer vision, but also machine learning. And all of this data will be processed by neural networks that can track assets, predict job completion time, or automatically identify when plans are off-track or an audit might be needed. It’s a truly exciting time, and a business opportunity recognized by Goldman Sachs at over $11b. What starts with a simple SDK integration can soon power the next generation of infrastructure.
For many of us at Hangar, our history with DJI runs deep, both personally and professionally. I’ve shot photos for travel publications like Fodors all over the world with DJI products. Two of our product team built a successful lifestyle business for aerial content in residential real estate with DJI products as 333 holders before Part 107 regulations came along. Our CTO Jim McAndrew learned about drones and built his first business entirely around DJI and their SDK, which eventually was acquired by Hangar. Without the SDK, he wouldn’t have had an entry point into the drone development space for what he wanted to pursue, these opportunities can enable visions for both creatives and entrepreneurs.
With the introduction of new DJI hardware platforms like the Spark and M210, we’re excited to see just how far the drone market can continue to grow. Every day there’s more users who are adopting smaller, powerful platforms personally and professionally, and we believe that the engineering marvels are just getting started.
