HEXO+ Aerial Drone Follows You For Amazing Action Footage, Comes To Kickstarter
Drones aren't just good for military use, they're proving to be fun tools for the public, as well. One day in the future, aerial drones might be a part of your everyday life by delivering Amazon packages (or pizza from Dominoes) to your door, recording your backyard shenanigans, and even accompanying you on extreme sports adventures where it's too difficult or too unsafe to bring along a camera crew. The latter is one of the ideas behind HEXO+, an intelligent drone that follows and films you autonomously.
HEXO+ has already surged past its goal of bringing in $50,000 on Kickstarter and now stands at over $260,000 with 29 days still to go. Not only does this project now have a financed future, but it just recently crossed its first Stretch Goal, which was set at $250,000. What that means hasn't been revealed yet, other than it will enable the development team to "take an already awesome package to the next level of usability." Rock on.
"We initially began thinking about HEXO+ because we needed a solution that would make aerial filming possible in the most remote places: on mountains, in the snow, and in all sorts of unpredictable situations that were quite a pain to deal with when trying to sync a drone pilot, a cameraman and a rider," explains Squadrone System, the company behind the project.
Whether it's making insane jumps with a motorcycle on a dirt course or skiing on remote slopes that have never been conquered before, the idea is for HEXO+ to be there with you to record all the action. To do that, it uses a GoPro Hero3 camera attached to a gimbal. Before you take off on your adventure, you fire up the accompanying app on your smartphone and set the distance between your subject (probably you) and the drone. Three quick gestures and you're done -- no pilot needed.
The drone can remain in flight for 15 minutes while getting up to 45MPH. As for the GoPro, it can film from up to 50 meters away.
If you want to learn more about the project and or back it with a pledge, head over to its Kickstarter page. Update, the HEXO+ is out of its Kickstarter phase now and almost into full production. Head on over to HEXO's web site here if you'd like more detail.
HEXO+ has already surged past its goal of bringing in $50,000 on Kickstarter and now stands at over $260,000 with 29 days still to go. Not only does this project now have a financed future, but it just recently crossed its first Stretch Goal, which was set at $250,000. What that means hasn't been revealed yet, other than it will enable the development team to "take an already awesome package to the next level of usability." Rock on.
"We initially began thinking about HEXO+ because we needed a solution that would make aerial filming possible in the most remote places: on mountains, in the snow, and in all sorts of unpredictable situations that were quite a pain to deal with when trying to sync a drone pilot, a cameraman and a rider," explains Squadrone System, the company behind the project.
Whether it's making insane jumps with a motorcycle on a dirt course or skiing on remote slopes that have never been conquered before, the idea is for HEXO+ to be there with you to record all the action. To do that, it uses a GoPro Hero3 camera attached to a gimbal. Before you take off on your adventure, you fire up the accompanying app on your smartphone and set the distance between your subject (probably you) and the drone. Three quick gestures and you're done -- no pilot needed.
The drone can remain in flight for 15 minutes while getting up to 45MPH. As for the GoPro, it can film from up to 50 meters away.
If you want to learn more about the project and or back it with a pledge, head over to its Kickstarter page. Update, the HEXO+ is out of its Kickstarter phase now and almost into full production. Head on over to HEXO's web site here if you'd like more detail.
