Lily Drone Knows to Start Shooting When You Toss It


LilyCameraDrone1A new day, a new drone right? Not exactly. Aerial photography and videography has hit an all new level of awesome with the Lily Robotics drone, a device that once airborne, will follow you to capture the best possible footage. The brains of the five-person operation that is Lily Robotics, include Henry Bradlow and Antoine Balaresque, whom, after meeting at the UC Berkeley Robotics Laboratory, have created an autonomous camera that acts as the pilot.


Lily Drone, which only needs you to toss it in the air to get the gist that it's time to pay attention, relies on a small GPS tracker that you carry in your pocket. Lily knows where you're going, and thanks to special computer vision technology and framing algorithms, knows how to physically identify you as its owner and get you in a good-looking shot. As far as sound, that is taken care of by the recording device located in your GPS tracker, then synced. According to The Verge, this is a first. Drones usually drown out sound because they are simply too loud of operators.


LilyCameraDroneUp for pre-order this week, Lily Drone is a 10.29 inch long and 3.22 inch tall quadcopter. It is waterproof up to 3.3 feet of water, has a mid-air battery life of 20 minutes, and can film at distances between 5 and 100 feet, and altitudes between 5 and 50 feet (Gizmag). It knows to engage and start filming thanks to simple little sensors inside of it that tell it it's in the air. Finally, the front-facing camera has a 94 degree field of view, sports 12 megapixels, and shoots 1080p video at 60 fps, or 720p video at 120 fps. Because Lily is still in prototype mode, we will have to wait until February 2016 for it to go on sale. If you're really excited, go ahead and throw down $499 (a fraction of what this thing will end up costing) to secure your own Lily Drone will be ready for you when the time comes.

Topics: Technology News Display Screen Technology Gadgets & Peripherals Inventions & Innovations Smartphones & Mobile Devices

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