Frontline | DJI Launches Dock 4 with 25-Second Automatic Battery Swapping for the First Time

Reporter: Zhang Ziyi Editor: Yuan Silai According to 36Kr, DJI launched the DJI Dock 4 on October 14. It is DJI's first unmanned drone dock to adopt an automatic battery swapping solution, designed for use with the Matrice 5TD drone and O4 ground station. The domestic bundle is priced at RMB 167,999. Software subscriptions, deployments for non-standard scenarios, and other optional services are charged separately. Pre-orders are now open. A drone dock is a fixed, automated station that handles drone takeoff and landing, charging, communications, and data transmission. For high-frequency tasks such as power line inspection, forest fire prevention, emergency rescue, and urban management, it reduces the need for pilots to repeatedly travel to sites with equipment, turning drones from temporarily deployed tools into fixed nodes that can be dispatched remotely. DJI launched its first-generation dock in 2022, and the Dock 4 is the fourth generation in the series. According to the company, DJI docks have been deployed in more than 80 countries and regions, completing over 8 million flights and 2 million hours of unattended operation in total. The main change in the Dock 4 is replacing the previous generation's fast-charging approach with automatic battery swapping. Previously, after a drone returned to the dock, it had to charge in place, typically with about half an hour between missions. The Dock 4 can complete a battery replacement in 25 seconds and take off again within 45 seconds. The matching drone has a maximum flight endurance of 59 minutes per flight. This change targets ground waiting time during continuous missions rather than single-flight duration. In routine inspections, a half-hour charging time is usually acceptable, but in scenarios such as fires, earthquakes, or continuous patrols, gaps in power replenishment can affect on-site coverage. With battery swapping, a drone can quickly take over the task once the previous flight ends. According to DJI, the Dock 4 uses a rotary battery swap mechanism that automatically removes depleted batteries, installs fully charged ones, and completes system self-checks. To shorten startup time after a swap, the device also includes a wireless power system that keeps the drone's avionics running while the battery is removed. The dock can operate in environments from -40°C to 50°C. These parameters come from DJI's controlled environment tests, and actual performance will vary with environmental conditions and usage. The Matrice 5TD, which accompanies the Dock 4, integrates multiple payload modules, including a telephoto lens, infrared sensor, and laser rangefinder. According to DJI's test data, its 11x telephoto lens can read license plates within 400 meters and identify small objects such as bolts and pins within 100 meters. The laser rangefinder has a maximum range of 3 kilometers and can overlay distance and target coordinates onto the video feed. The Matrice 5TD has a maximum payload of 450 grams and offers three mounting positions. For example, during nighttime search and rescue, it can carry a loudspeaker, a searchlight, and a parachute simultaneously. For flight safety, the airframe includes three-directional millimeter-wave radar, omnidirectional lidar, and six-directional visual sensing, and it supports takeoff and landing in winds of up to 12 meters per second. The Dock 4 also extends AI recognition to flight and back-end systems. The Matrice 5TD can identify 17 categories of targets in real time onboard, including vehicles, vessels, and smoke or fire, and allows integration of third-party models. DJI FlightHub 2 handles remote operation, flight route missions, online inspection, alerts, and equipment maintenance. The concurrently launched Cloud API 2 helps enterprises and developers connect the dock to existing business systems. From a product structure perspective, the Dock 4 is not simply a faster charging device added to a drone, but a combination of aircraft, battery swapping mechanism, sensing payloads, AI recognition, and back-end dispatch into an unattended system. Its core change is to minimize dependence on personnel and time between missions, providing the foundation for high-frequency, continuous operations.