New camera developments: UAV?

[JNieman]

http://www.gizmag.com/mecam-tiny-autonomous-uav/26007/

tl;dr auto-pilot, voice commands with a 'follow' function, elevation controls, and records audio/video. Expected price $50 but we'll see about that.

So... instead of a gopro/contour on your hat, earpro, shirt, rifle, whatever... how bout them apples?

Problems I see:

If running, can it keep up?
When following, what if you go around the corner of obstacles?
If it's low and close, if it goes behind your head, you might not be able to see malfunctions, manipulations or screw-ups you want to go back and diagnose or assess. If it's high enough to get beyond line-of-sight problems, it might be too far away to diagnose/assess manipulation problems.


Otherwise, this thing's neat.

 

[latech15]

Wind would be a huge issue with that thing.

 

[JNieman]

Wind would be a huge issue with that thing.

I'm curious about that too. It kind of ties into the follow/tracking, and how fast it can maneuver. It has a multi-sensor object tracking ability, so positional stability is achievable. I've seen /other/ quadrocopters that are decently capable of stabilization during some wind, but without gyroscopic steadied camera mounts, it gets me nearly motion sick watching the video of some of them.

 

[JNieman]

A very nerdy friend of mine with an interest in this product just explained the following to me:

It has gyro-stabilization on the camera already in the design.

As for the 'third person problems' I talked about with regards to it being at a bad angle to see the gun, like if my head blocked it - he says the tracking software has an orientation lock that you can set, so that it will try to maintain the same orientation to you the whole time. That is to say, you can stand and stare straight down-range, and fly it to your 1o'clock, camera pointed to you, and hit 'set' and it will try to always be at your 1 o'clock pointing at you.

No idea on the speed of maneuverability, as that's usually something only final tests could report, and since they're still buttoning up the design, there's no clue what the final mass and props are anyways.

 

[themcfarland]

The UAV's already have tracking and gps return home feature or can fly a pre loaded path and then return home of needed.. The cameras can stream 760p live or both to a recorder.. cameras are awesome quality.

 

[JNieman]

The UAV's already have tracking and gps return home feature or can fly a pre loaded path and then return home of needed.. The cameras can stream 760p live or both to a recorder.. cameras are awesome quality.

I've seen some with great capabilities, just not at the price point these guys are trying to accomplish - this puts it well in the realm of entry-level hobby sales.

Assuming the set up before a USPSA stage isn't time consuming or inconvenient to other participants, it'd be neat to try out for something like that, after testing at home.

Pretty badass though. Get 3rd-person view of your training/practice/performance, without having someone run behind you.