On September 17th, a wonderful underwater documentary short film kicked off Chasing Innovation’s 2019 new product launch event. After a brief greeting from the host, the event reached its most critical moment. Yang Yang, Co-founder and CMO of Chasing Innovation, took the stage to introduce "Chasing DORY" — the world’s smallest underwater shooting drone, which the R&D team had spent over a year developing and overcoming numerous technical challenges to create.
“This is an epoch-making product launched for the consumer market, and it is unparalleled on the current market,” Yang Yang said confidently. As a leading enterprise in underwater robots integrating R&D, production and sales, Chasing Innovation has firmly occupied the top position in this track with a complete product line such as the Gladius MINI. The newly released consumer-grade underwater shooting drone "Chasing DORY" fully inherits the 5-thruster structural design and exquisite craftsmanship of the previous generation product, reducing its volume by 65% and weight by 56%. It has truly pulled away from competitors of the same type, achieving real lightweight and portability, and perfectly matching outdoor water-friendly travel.
Small in Size, Powerful in Performance
As a micro underwater shooting drone designed for travelers, the primary indicator that Chasing DORY needs to meet is compactness. At the beginning of the project, the R&D team prioritized reducing the weight and size of the machine. Compared with the previous generation underwater shooting drone Gladius MINI, Chasing DORY’s volume is reduced by 65% and weight by 56%. The machine is similar in size to an iPad mini and weighs only 1.1 kg. Its extremely portable "build" makes Chasing DORY the smallest product in the current global consumer-grade underwater shooting drone market.
Despite the significant reduction in volume and weight, Chasing DORY is highly functional. The drone is equipped with a 1080p full HD camera and two 250-lumen LED auxiliary light sources, ensuring that Chasing DORY can see and shoot clearly underwater; a 4800mAh lithium battery provides up to 1 hour of battery life, and a 15-meter deep diving cable allows users to truly enjoy shooting freely; inheriting the 5-thruster structural design and exquisite craftsmanship from the previous generation product "Gladius MINI", Chasing DORY still retains the functions of ±45° adjustable pitch angle and one-key depth setting. In addition to portability, to further meet the water-friendly travel needs of outdoor travel enthusiasts, "Chasing DORY" has added a GPS positioning function besides "slimming down". A GPS chip is installed on the buoy, and the position prompt range is displayed in real time through the exclusive APP. Once it is detected that the drone has sailed out of the safe range, the APP will immediately issue an anti-loss warning to avoid disconnection.
Different from previous products, to further move towards the consumer end, Chasing DORY abandons the handle operation mode and instead adopts mobile phone APP operation. The virtual joystick makes operating the drone as simple as playing a game, and the 19 kinds of image filters and fast video editing functions built into the exclusive APP make every frame shot a grand scene, and support one-click sharing to Moments, further satisfying users’ social needs.
"Sticking to" the R&D Link
Looking at the track of underwater intelligent equipment, "large", "heavy" and "expensive" are basically the most obvious characteristics of traditional underwater robot products, as if an invisible wall stands between the general consumers and "underwater shooting". At the beginning of the Chasing DORY project, the idea was conceived: can we make an extremely portable, easy-to-operate and affordable underwater shooting drone? This idea has gone through years of market research, program discussion and R&D tackling, and now this world’s smallest micro underwater shooting drone is finally launched.
How did Chasing DORY become the world’s smallest underwater shooting drone? "Greatly reducing the body volume, integrating various functional modules to a high degree without affecting performance is the key, and improving the integration of electrical parts is the key among keys." At this launch event, Yang Yang, Co-founder of Chasing Innovation, shared the birth process of Chasing DORY with the guests: integrating the 4 circuit boards required by traditional underwater shooting drones into 1, realizing the "four-in-one" of signal transmission, control, image processing and motor drive for the first time, the body volume is greatly reduced, only 65% of the previous generation product. In addition, Chasing DORY abandons the traditional metal sealing material and replaces it with a new injection molding material, so the weight is greatly reduced, only 56% of the previous generation product. To further optimize the material and structure, our R&D team has experimented with more than 10 different shapes of sealing structures and conducted hundreds of tests in the past few years before finally finding the optimal solution. Most importantly, since there is no waterproof motor with small volume and strong power on the market, Chasing Innovation has set up a professional R&D team, which adopted independently developed and produced motors for the first time on Chasing DORY.
At the end of the launch event, Yang Yang, Co-founder of Chasing Innovation, also announced the official price of Chasing DORY as 2,499 yuan. The ultra-high cost-effective price caused cheers from the guests present. At present, the product has been launched on Tmall Mall, and the first 100 users will enjoy an ultra-low discount price of 1,999 yuan. Chasing Innovation will also ship 500 units before the National Day holiday, allowing the first batch of users to take Chasing DORY to start the wonderful National Day holiday.
After the New Product Launch Event, 36kr Sichuan Also Conducted an Exclusive Interview with Yang Yang, Co-founder and CMO of Chasing Innovation:
1. What is your view on the underwater shooting drone track?
Although underwater shooting drones are an emerging thing, it does not mean that its market scale is small, because it is not only a consumer entertainment product, but also a product that can be applied to more industry fields to form a complete solution, such as ship inspection, fishery survey, environmental investigation, underwater search and rescue, etc. A large number of underwater applications can fully support the industrial scale of this industry. After in-depth research in the early stage and years of exploration in this industry by Chasing Innovation, we believe that the underwater shooting drone market should be a trillion-level blue ocean market.
2. What special significance does the launch of Chasing DORY, this consumer-grade product, have?
Although the underwater shooting drone market, or the underwater intelligent equipment market, is a trillion-level blue ocean market, we also need to see some existing problems in this market, such as insufficient awareness and popularity, and the entire market still needs continuous cultivation and education. Chasing Innovation believes that to break the deadlock in this market, first of all, there should be a more affordable underwater shooting drone that can come to consumers, let everyone know and understand it, and explore more industry applications and solutions in the process of playing. The birth of Chasing DORY is playing such a role in educating the market. Although it is the smallest product in the company’s entire product system, it is the most strategically significant product.
3. Consumer electronic products such as Gopro and drones were all introduced into China by foreign players and detonated the market. From the current sales structure, overseas sales of Chasing Innovation also account for a considerable proportion. Will Chasing Innovation continue to use this marketing model in the future?
This is indeed an interesting phenomenon. Science and technology enterprises in Shenzhen all have a strong impulse to go overseas. Chasing Innovation was founded in 2016 and started its overseas strategy in 2017, when it completed a crowdfunding of 500,000 US dollars overseas through INDIEGOGO. After several years of development, Chasing Innovation has built an experienced and powerful R&D, production and sales team. At present, its products and services cover more than 40 countries around the world. To better serve overseas users and further expand the overseas market, Chasing Innovation established a wholly-owned subsidiary in Seattle, USA in April this year.
Many consumer electronic products like to choose to go international at the beginning, first of all, because foreign users have a higher acceptance and stronger purchase intention for novel and cool technology trendy products. Second, for the underwater shooting field where Chasing Innovation is located, the water quality abroad is better. Of course, after several years of development in the overseas market, Chasing Innovation has gained a lot, both in terms of product feedback content output and brand exposure. These experiences have accumulated good experience for Chasing DORY to officially develop the domestic market this year.
4. What is Chasing Innovation’s development plan for the future?
Chasing Innovation is positioned as a leader in the field of underwater intelligent equipment. Since its establishment, the company has been deeply engaged in the civil consumer market and accumulated rich experience in product development and market promotion. In the future, Chasing Innovation will further expand its product line, gradually enter the industry-level application market for governments and enterprises, and provide better services for government and enterprise customers with better solutions and service levels. In terms of market, in addition to further consolidating the overseas market, we will also vigorously expand the domestic market from this year, making the flowers bloom both inside and outside the wall.
