The Sony Airpeak drone has officially landed. Sony has come up with its first glimpse of the new flying machine at CES 2021.
And what an entrance it was, with Airpeak filmed soaring above a snowy landscape and carrying a Sony A7S III. In addition, it kept pace with a prototype Sony Vision Scar at a race track.
The short demo video emphatically answered our main question about Sony Airpeak – what kind of drone will it be?
With its mildly terrifying wingspan, nifty retractable landing gear, and high-end. Sony Alpha payload, there’s no doubt that this will (for now) be a drone for professional cinematographers.
Sony at CES 2021
At CES 2021, Sony confirmed the Airpeak launch date mentioned in its first official announcement back in November 2020.
A short statement said, “Sony will launch a new business targeted for professional photography machine for professionals”. For worldwide readers, that means we should get more information in March or April 2021.
Interestingly, Sony refers to Airpeak as a “project” and “new business” rather than a standalone product. So it’s certainly possible that the drone shown in the CES 2021 demo will be the first of a new range of Airpeak drones
All Updates of the Sony Airpeak drone
So far, Sony has kept an impressively tight grip on rumors surrounding its Airpeak drone project. The only information we have so far is from the official Airpeak page and the teaser video (below) shown at CES 2021.
On November 9 2020, Sony said that it had “launched a new project for drones in the field of AI robotics” and that Airpeak will “support the creativity of video creators to the fullest extent possible, aiming to contribute to the further development of the entertainment industry, as well as to improved efficiency and savings in various industries”.
Despite its size, Sony says that Airpeak is, “The industry’s smallest class of drone that can be equipped with the Alpha system.” And that it “aims to contribute to the world of entertainment while also pursuing new possibilities for creative expression”.
In terms of official information, that it’s so far. But there are clearly many more Sony Airpeak secrets to reveal.
For example, in the early images, we can see that it appears to have what look like pairs of obstacle avoidance sensors on the front and rear, plus another camera above that.
The bottom Line
The arrival of such a high-end professional drone would be appear to dash earlier hopes that we might see Airpeak rival some of DJI’s popular consumer drones, like the DJI Mavic Air 2.
Sony has also called Airpeak a new business targeted at “professional photography and video production”.
One thing is clear from both the patents and official Airpeak announcement – Sony’s idea of a drone is an AI-powered flying camera that does a lot of the heavy lifting, in both flying and image-taking terms, for you. Whether Sony applies this philosophy to a DJI-rivaling consumer drone, though, remains to be seen.
