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Dronemaker DJI has spent the last few years organizing a major robotics competition in China called RoboMasters, where students build and code robots that fight in a literal arena. Now, DJI wants to sell a more accessible version of this idea to kids in the US, Europe and Japan, with an educational toy robot tank called RoboMaster S1.
The RoboMaster S1 is a remote control car with a camera, an educational platform and a DJI, which flexes its perfectly developed hardware and software muscles. Available from Wednesday at $ 499, the S1 can be flown using a mobile or coded app to move alone. It is equipped with 31 sensors that allow it to map its environment. It can move 360 degrees thanks to its intelligently designed wheels.
Just like DJI's new drones, the S1 can recognize gestures and sounds, or track objects, and respond to them, all with the aid of computer vision. (It is equipped with a camera with a f2.4 aperture and a wide 120-degree field of view, which broadcasts its Wi-Fi view to the mobile application.) contrary to With DJI drones, the S1 can shoot projectiles in the form of small balls of gel balls. These pearls come in a very small form but swell once immersed in water for a few hours; they are not toxic, but they will require cleaning after use.
The RoboMaster S1 can also be controlled with a controller, although this one is sold separately in an additional pack including an additional battery and several gel beads, which will be available at a later date.
The S1 was impressive in a brief scrum. It responds to commands with an almost imperceptible delay, both by the way it passes through the ground and by the way the head responds to the aiming controls. DJI made us review different types of use, including a race, where we had to not only beat our opponents, but also scan a series of images en route to win.
We also tested the S1 robots in "battle mode", where we drove them into an improvised arena. The person who scores the most points earned (by shooting opponents in sensitive areas lit by S1 diodes, as in real RoboMasters, although this can be done with gel beads or with lasers) , also Reload life points and develop special abilities by scanning special images installed around the arena.
DJI believes, however, that the value of S1 lies in giving children from outside China a taste of life in the RoboMasters competition. As such, the S1 is highly customizable and designed to be tinkered with. It comes disassembled, so kids have to put almost every piece together just to start. They can write Scratch 3.0 or Python code to control things as granular as the wheelset, which allows them to program the S1 to do all sorts of things, such as performing evasive maneuvers in combat (another echo of the competition ).
DJI has developed a suite of video tutorials and guides to help users learn to do all of this, even if they have never coded. "The hope is that robotics will become a major sport, like football, basketball. It's our vision of this product, "said Shuo Yang, S1 Project Manager. Bloomberg.
The announcement of S1 comes at a somewhat shaky moment, for several reasons. On the one hand, the United States is currently engaged in a trade war with China, while accusing one of their largest private companies (Huawei) of being able to spy on behalf of the Chinese government.
This combination of forces has raised so many problems that the US government is looking elsewhere for Chinese companies that may pose a risk to national security. Last month, the US Department of Homeland Security issued an alert that drones manufactured in China could potentially capture and transmit sensitive data to the Chinese government. DJI representing nearly 80% of drones in North America, it was perceived as a blow against the drone bow.
The RoboMaster S1 is obviously much more limited in places where it can travel, but it has a built-in high resolution camera. This could raise other concerns because consumers (and even some members of the government) have become more sensitive to the idea of allowing cameras at home.
DJI also presents the S1 in a somewhat militaristic language, which could not only please some consumers given the current tension between the United States and China, but also because last week marked the 30th anniversary of the demonstrations on Tiananmen Square, where a famous man in front of (and arrested) Chinese military tanks.
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