AI Detection with the DJI Matrice 5TD and FlightHub 2: What It Means for Your Industry

A drone that only records video still needs someone to watch it. On a large site, or across many sites, that doesn’t scale. The real value of an automated drone is knowing what’s happening in the picture, without a person checking every frame.

The DJI Matrice 5TD, which flies automatically from DJI Dock 4, combines wide-angle, zoom and infrared cameras with onboard AI. Through DJI FlightHub 2, it can recognize people, vehicles and boats in both visible and infrared imagery, flag abnormal temperatures, track targets and send alerts automatically. Combined with Remote Robotic’s Remote Operations Center (ROC), it turns every patrol, inspection and response into actionable information instead of hours of footage.

This guide explains what the Matrice 5TD brings to public safety, private security, mining, energy, oil and gas, and construction.

What the Matrice 5TD brings to the job

What the AI detects

Each target type has its own alert threshold. For example, an alert can trigger when one person is detected, or when more than five vehicles are detected.

Coming soon for Dock 4: DJI has announced more recognition targets, including smoke and fire and animals.

At a glance: where AI monitoring fits

Public safety

Policing and Drone as First Responder (DFR)

When a call comes in, the drone takes off as soon as the dock opens and flies to the scene at up to 21 m/s. It’s airborne and on scene ahead of ground crews, streaming live video.

• Dock as First Responder: automatic launch from a dock to the incident location.
• Situational awareness: officers see the scene before they arrive.
• AI detection: recognizes people and vehicles in the live feed, day or night, and Smart Track follows them automatically.
• Custom search: describe a suspect vehicle in text, such as ‘white cargo van’, and the AI searches for it.
• Night operations: thermal imaging and Night Scene Mode support work in darkness.
• Collision reconstruction: document the scene and vehicle positions from above.
• Precise locations: the 3 km laser rangefinder measures the distance and position of targets.

Fire and rescue

• Urban fires: live aerial and thermal video for size-up and tactics.
• Wildfires: monitor fire behaviour and spread from the air.
• Hot spots: radiometric thermal imaging measures temperatures up to 550°C and finds heat that can’t be seen with the naked eye.
• Search and rescue: thermal and zoom cameras help locate people, day or night.
• Infrared AI detection: recognizes people in thermal imagery during search and rescue.
• Water rescue: boat detection supports searches on lakes and rivers.
• Disaster response: rapid aerial assessment after floods, storms and other emergencies.
• Temperature alerts: flag areas above set thresholds.

Private security

• Alarm response: the drone launches automatically when a fence, camera or sensor alarm goes off.
• AI patrol routes: automatically detect people and vehicles in restricted areas and send alerts with snapshots and locations.
• Automatic response: when a person is detected, the drone can take photos, record video, broadcast a warning and turn on the spotlight.
• Night patrols: thermal imaging and Night Scene Mode for 24/7 coverage.
• Deterrence: the AS2D speaker broadcasts warnings up to 400 m, and the AL2D light lights up the scene.
• Continuous coverage: Dock 4’s battery swap keeps the drone ready for back-to-back patrols.
• Multi-site coverage: one operations centre patrols many facilities.

Industrial

What happens when the AI detects something

When an alert threshold is met during an automated mission, the drone can automatically:

• Take photos of each detected object
• Record video for a set length of time
• Hover and wait for a pilot to take over
• Turn on the speaker to broadcast a warning
• Turn on the spotlight to light up the scene
• Send a warning message with a snapshot and location to selected users

At the ROC, detections are highlighted on screen with an alert sound and pop-up notification. Our pilots can use Smart Track to lock onto and follow a target, and the system tries to re-acquire it automatically if it’s lost.

AI patrol routes

You draw the area you want covered on a map, and FlightHub 2 automatically plans a patrol route over it.

• People alerts are on by default.
• Vehicle and boat alerts can be added.
• Recognition can be limited to specific zones, such as a fence line, a laydown yard or a pipeline corridor.
• Altitude and camera angle are set for each target type to give the best recognition rates.

That makes it easy to set up security patrols, perimeter checks and corridor monitoring that run automatically on a schedule.

From detection to action

1. 1

   The drone flies its mission: a scheduled patrol, a routine inspection or an emergency response.

2. 2

   AI scans in real time: people, vehicles, boats and abnormal temperatures are recognized during the flight.

3. 3

   Findings are located: the laser rangefinder measures distance and position.

4. 4

   Your team is notified: warning messages with snapshots and locations are sent to selected users.

5. 5

   Pilots investigate: licensed ROC pilots can zoom in, switch to thermal and stay overhead.

6. 6

   Live video is shared: officers, responders, security teams and site managers see what the drone sees.

7. 7

   Everything is recorded: imagery and flight logs are saved for reports and investigations.

AI change detection

FlightHub 2 compares photos taken from the same inspection points on two different missions and automatically marks what’s changed.

• Ignore vehicles: parked or moving vehicles aren’t flagged as changes.
• Set a minimum change size: filter out small, unimportant differences.
• Edit results: add, remove or adjust the marked changes.
• Export reports: as PDF or Word, with change statistics, photos and coordinates.
• Change Detection Pro: detects changes even when photos aren’t taken from exactly the same angle, and can produce AI-generated reports.

Instead of reviewing thousands of images, your team reviews only what’s different.

Records and reporting

• AI Warning Records: every alert is logged with a snapshot, and can be filtered by date, category and object type.
• Route warnings: each one shows the trigger time, conditions, object location and snapshot.
• Exportable reports: of AI warning events from flight records.
• Smart Search: automatically tags and counts objects in stored photos and videos.
• AI reports: generate reports with charts and insights from a plain-language request.

Why AI matters

AI with human oversight

AI makes monitoring faster and more consistent, but people stay in control:

• Licensed pilots oversee every mission.
• AI findings are reviewed before anyone takes action.
• Pilots can take manual control to investigate.
• Your team decides how to respond.

AI flags it, our pilots confirm it, and your team acts on it.

Frequently asked questions

Get started

Turn every patrol, inspection and response into actionable information. Book a ROC briefing and we’ll design an AI-powered program around your industry, your sites and your team.

Request a briefing with the ROC form below or call 416-303-3575.