#HTE

Small, Hovering “Follow Me” Camera Drone

The Hover Camera is a small, dual-camera-equipped quadrotor drone that can be programmed to follow you. In the interest of safety, the entire thing is enclosed inside a carbon fiber cage; in the interest of portability, it folds in half, breaking down to “about the size of a VHS cassette tape,” according to Engadget. Take a look at this thing:

Obviously there are some kinks to iron out. The noise produced by the drone will preclude it from becoming, say, NY1’s go-to camera, not to mention the video quality sure doesn’t look 4K. But at just 238 grams (about half a pound) it’s quite the technical achievement. Developed by a Chinese startup called Zero Zero Robotics, the Hover Camera is a breath of fresh air because it’s a Chinese product that made the news not for being a cheap copy, but an intelligent original. Indeed, this is something others will try to copy, though the company CEO figures they’ve got their bases covered:

MQ Wang, CEO of Zero Zero Robotics and a PhD graduate at Stanford University, isn’t worried about his product being copied. “It’s a lot harder to build things of this size versus bigger things. Something of this size needs to be built from ground up… We use a completely proprietary algorithm [to fly it], as we’re squeezing every single drop of juice out of the Snapdragon 801 [mobile processor]; and we don’t use open source code because it’s not good enough.”

If they can get the video stabilization worked out, I think in a couple of years I won’t be seeing so many idiots walking down Broadway with selfie sticks. Instead they’ll have one of these tracking and shooting them.

http://www.core77.com/posts/52474/Small-Hovering-Follow-Me-Camera-Drone