Are you a fan of all those beautiful drone videos? Soon it will be a child’s play to make a drone movie with Lily Camera. Lily is not a normal drone that you must control remotely, but one that follows you based on a GPS tracker and facial recognition. You throw the device just in the air, after which it begins to follow you. The camera is in high definition and slow motion recording and is waterproof. Lily will come on the market next year at a cost of around 800 dollars.
Lily: An ambitious project
It is an ambitious project from Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow, two classmates in the training computer science at the University of Berkeley. Lily has a battery life of approximately 20 minutes and follows his ‘boss’ via a GPS tracker you put in your pocket or wear around your wrist. The camera in the drone automatically focuses on the person who is holding the handset and uses algorithms and advanced technology to center it. Lily also records audio from the tracker and automatically synchronizes the audio with the video.
Tech website The Verge could test a prototype of the camera in New York and was pretty impressed with the results. As the promo video promises, the drone stabilizes itself even after turning around a few times, and it automatically begins to fly. Lily does this even in wet conditions. The drone is fully waterproof and floats. It can also land on your hand through sensors and a downward facing camera.
“Cameras are now mostly limited by how well the user can shoot,” says creator Bradlow. “But with a flying camera, you get great pictures from all angles, which it also operates.” Everything works extremely easy, says Bradlow. It is an amazing gadget, its all about the practice, and it is useful for different areas of work, I actually noticed my roof was messed up thanks to the drone, so I had to call the Bell Roofing Company, it was funny, never would have realize this without this awesome drone.
Simply throw the drone up and you’re off. Sensors in the camera and the GPS Tracker can recognize, for example, when you make a jump and then automatically switch over to slow motion mode. Through the GPS tracker, you can also give manual instructions and choose whether the drone must fly around you, or should exchange position in front or behind you. In addition to the HD picture quality of 1080p, Lily can also take 12-megapixel photos.
Lily the camera is still under development and costs through pre-order now $499. The final price will be twice as high. And a minus tentative: the drone can’t currently dodge obstacles, and requires an open space.
