AirDog – Auto-follow camera drone
Oddly enough, Kickstarter was blessed with not one, but two auto-follow drone projects this week. The concept behind AirDog is basically the exact same as the aforementioned Hexo+ — it’s just excecuted a bit differently. Both drones are designed to hold a GoPro and follow you autonomously to capture video, but AirDog differs from Hexo+ in a few key areas. For starters, it’s a quadcopter, not a hexacopter — but that’s not terribly important. The biggest difference, as far as we can tell, is that AirDog is designed to follow either your phone or a special wristband (Hexo+ only follows your phone), the latter of which gives it better range and following capabilities. AirDog also lists a broader range of shooting styles on its Kickstarter page than Hexo+ does, but since both bots still require additional development on the software side of things, its too early to say that one has more features than the other. Find out more here.
Hexo+ – Auto-follow camera drone
It used to be that stabilized, high-quality aerial footage was only something you could shoot if you had deep pockets and access to a helicopter. Nowadays, anyone with enough cash for a GoPro and a quadcopter drone can shoot aerial video, but it’s still a rather tricky process. Even after years of rapid improvement, camera drones require an experienced pilot to control them remotely. Hexo+ changes all that. Instead of forcing you to fiddle with joysticks and levers, this little hexacopter is designed to follow you autonomously. This makes it perfect for action sports where there’s a lot of movement happening — you can just ride down whatever hill/wave/ramp you happen to be shredding and the drone will follow you at a distance of your choosing, capturing stabilized HD video via GoPro (not included) mounted on it’s underside. Check out our full post for more info.
Author: Drew Prindle
Source: DigitalTrends