Amateur drone technology honestly scares the living bejesus out of me.
Amateur drone technology honestly scares the living bejesus out of me. I know, it’s a bit irrational, but if we’ve learned anything from Terminator 1, 2: Judgement Day, 3: Rise of the Machines, 4: Salvation, or (what I assume is the allegory in the yet-to-be-release) 2015’s Genisys, its that artificial intelligence is not to be trusted.
But holy shit do I want this new drone really really badly even if its a key step in the destruction of mankind.
Meet the Lilly Camera – the world’s first self-flying drone.
The Lilly Camera makes a number of claims, all of which are incredible from modern drone standards, and for those who have ever tried to fly a drone (I’m looking at you TH!) you know its not an easy task, but the Lilly Camera hopes to simplify things.
It appears you attach a kind of bracelet which acts as a tracking devise and the Lilly camera drone follows you within a certain radius. Toss her in the air, and the Lilly Cam flys on its own. You can also press a number of buttons to help direct the drone to take certain actions like lead in front, or circle around, or take high-res stills.
All of this is really really impressive and makes me wonder how long before the Lilly Camera turns it’s sites on man and takes us out one tracking bracelet at a time.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop.
Since the video made Reddit’s front page yesterday, many tech-news giants have latched on to try and find out more. It’s not like this thing is in full production yet, though you can take preorders now.
The folks at Wired got a post up this AM which points out some of the faults of the device, but backs up the claim that this tech could even exist for consumers so soon:
But Lily does work: you hold it in your hand and tap Take Off, or just toss it up into the air, and it floats up and hovers above you. I took a spin, tapping Follow in the app, and Lily chased after Ho as he ran away with the tracker in his hand. I hit Spiral and the Lily spun in a wide circle around Ho, the camera trained on him. The whole time, live video streamed to my phone. It looked good, certainly better than I could have done myself.
I’m just impressed this wasn’t the end result of a kickstarter or something, so kudos for them raising money it the old fashioned way.
Alright, I’m returning to my bunker in anticipation of the Skynet take over, have fun with the robot apocalypse, nerds.
