GoPro Autonomous Drones

[GiddYupJoe]

Since everyone seems to like to spend everyone elses money on this site, CHECK this out! We have all been buying GoPros like crazy, we all want to be like @Ronnie and be able to take sweet areial shots while we are out doing cool sH#t. It looks like next year we will be able to combine those and come up with some sweet video, with no skills at all! All for around a grand'ish.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-first-auto-follow-action-sports-dron

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/16/airdog/

Here is another one that has already hit its funding and ships in spring 2015.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomous-aerial-camera

If they work the way they say they do, I can see this being huge! Ronnie, do you know anything about these types of drones?

 

[maboat]

LIKE!

 

[Volffas]

That looks pretty cool. It will be interesting to see how well it works. The sample video was pretty shaky, and the motorcycle guy didn't get too far from the camera.

Side note; GoPro is going public pretty soon. It will be interesting to see how the stock goes. It sounds like the estimated IPO will be $22-$24 per share.

 

[Ronnie]

This is the first time I've read about these new drones, they were not even mentioned in the first edition of rotor drone magazine which was released last month or this month. Nor have I seen any threads on this on runryder.com (a dedicated rc heli forum).

I like the concept and understand why they have to fly so close if a gopro or gopro like camera is used since they have a fixed focus with a small aperture. Dji phanton 2s and up,can fly preprogrammed routes but they do not yet have a follow along feature which I would love to have especially on the water.

The air dog looks tough and compacts nicely. I would have taken my phantom on vacation to Hawaii but I didn't have an easy way to transport it. Taking video on the slopes isn't going to happen where I snow board, the resort already has policies regarding multi copters so I'd bet most other ski resorts do as well.

I won't be the first in line for this but would certainly be interested if it does everything the mfg claims and does it well. I think it will be tough to compete with dji, traxxis and other mfgs of multi copters but right now air dog is offering something no one else is, at the same time I think other mfgs can and will offer the same auto track feature possibly through a software/firmware upgrade. This is not a feature I would use nest power lines or trees since according to the article the air dog flies a predetermined altitude and it can sense / avoid objects.

If you don't want to wait i recommend dji's fc40 (first gen phantom with built in camera). They are about $500 have a 10 to 15 minute flight time as well as GPS stabilization and a return to home function. So you can just throw it into a hover, stay in the frame and get some great footage without really flying the heli but if you want it to follow you or anyone else you will have to fly it. Which is not hard when you are flying it from the back (nose forward, tail towards you) but can be challenging in any other orientation.