DJI partners up with Microsoft to give drones A.I. superpowers

Drone pilots will soon have the ability to send up a fleet of DJI drones, stream footage from their cameras, and use A.I. technology to spot anomalies in that footage  — all from a Windows PC.

During the Build 2018 developer conference on Monday, May 7, DJI and Microsoft announced a partnership to build a software development kit (SDK) to enable drone control from a PC, including live data streaming, rather than piloting the craft from a handheld controller. With the DJI SDK for Microsoft, drones can stream real-time video to a computer, and use Azure IoT Edge artificial intelligence to analyze and interpret the footage, Sam George, director of Microsoft’s Azure IoT Engineering, said during the presentation.