Japan's ACSL plans to enter US drone market

[OldBobcat]

This week, ten-year-old drone company ACSL announced plans to enter the U.S. commercial drone market.

Here's a link to an article from TechCrunch.

Some additional info.

The company’s first offering in the U.S. will be the Soten small aerial photography drone. Shipping is expected to begin in late 2023. Launched in 2021, the Soten folding quadcopter weighs 1.7 kg (3.8 lb.) with a standard camera that can be hot-swapped for an electro-optical/infrared, multispectral or optical zoom camera. Flight times is 25-29 min.

ACSL describes the Soten as “NDAA compliant,” a term used by the drone industry to indicate that systems comply with U.S. data security requirements imposed over concerns that data collected by DJI drones can be accessed by the Chinese government.

The Japanese company says photography and video collected by the Soten can be optionally encrypted before being recorded to the onboard memory card. Communication between the drone and its controller is always encrypted, ACSL says.

 

[moldorf]

curious so I googled:



pretty similar in appearance to the Mavic 3

here's an interesting feature:



now that might be useful although I am a bit skeptical about what they mean by an "optical zoom camera"

twice the weight of the Mavic 3, short flight times, 32MPH maximum speed, 4KM max transmission limit...all those are disadvantages compared to Mavic

 

[CactusJackSlade]

VERY interesting features... and possible competitor to DJI (I am hoping)... but my initial reaction to the 4km distance rating is not so good. Not that I need the distance, but longer range usually translates into better penetration through trees/obstacles etc. Other than that it will be interesting to see how the released model actually compares to DJI's line up.

The hot swappable camera system is extremely attractive

 

[SkywalkerFeng]

curious so I googled:

View attachment 163667

pretty similar in appearance to the Mavic 3

here's an interesting feature:

View attachment 163668

now that might be useful although I am a bit skeptical about what they mean by an "optical zoom camera"

twice the weight of the Mavic 3, short flight times, 32MPH maximum speed, 4KM max transmission limit...all those are disadvantages compared to Mavic

A swappable camera without gimbal… Mmm, how practical is that？

The lack of aerodynamics in that chunky body shape is truly astonishing. No wonder it is twice the weight of Mavic 3, but half the flight time.

As much as I'd like to see a worthy competitor to DJI on the consumer drone market, ACSL is far from there yet.

 

[Auminer]

I find it curious that the Stoen name is also a Chinese company...http://www.sotentech.com/
What's the odds?

 

[anotherlab]

I find it curious that the Stoen name is also a Chinese company...http://www.sotentech.com/
What's the odds?

Naming things is hard. The odds are whatever name you pick, someone, somewhere, has already used it.

In this case, Soten is the phonetic pronunciation of 蒼天, which translates to "blue sky" in English. Which is appropriate for a drone.

 

[anotherlab]

A swappable camera without gimbal… Mmm, how practical is that？

The lack of aerodynamics in that chunky body shape is truly astonishing. No wonder it is twice the weight of Mavic 3, but half the flight time.

As much as I'd like to see a worthy competitor to DJI on the consumer drone market, ACSL is far from there yet.

According to the product sheet, it has a 3-axis gimbal.

None of the Mavics are very aerodynamic, this isn't much different.

What was interesting was that the spec sheet only mentions Android, I would imagine they would need to develop an iOS app to bring it to the US market.

 

[Auminer]

Naming things is hard. The odds are whatever name you pick, someone, somewhere, has already used it.

In this case, Soten is the phonetic pronunciation of 蒼天, which translates to "blue sky" in English. Which is appropriate for a drone.

Darn, the things that can be learned on here. Thanks for the info!