Our friends at a company called Zero Zero may have finally come up with a solution for people needing to take selfie pictures and video without the need for those pesky selfie sticks – Introducing the selfie bot, officially known as, the Hover Camera. Wouldn’t it be a great idea if selfie sticks could fly by themselves and take selfies of you while you’re walking around or while you are posing with friends? Well, the folks at Zero Zero have heard our plea and have designed a drone that can follow you around while taking pictures of you and videos. Finally, it’s about time! So in summary, the hover camera is designed for people who like to take selfies and who also like to take selfie videos without having to hold a selfie stick or be distracted by picture or video taking technology.
Thanks to a successful fundraising effort, the company was able to raise 25 million dollars to go into the research and development of the hover camera.
So what is the hover camera exactly? It is pretty much a model quadcopter that that converts into something resembling a book when it is stored away when not being used to take pictures or record short video clips. Since it looks like a book when not in use it makes it easy to carry around in your bag or simply tote around in your hands. However once you unfold the book it immediately transforms into a quadcopter. The Hover Camera weighs about 238 grams and it has a carbon fiber body which is lightweight and very strong indeed. In fact it is designed to take its fair share of bumps and crash landings. Not to worry though because the plastic drone propellers can be easily replaced.
Now, although it is a quadcopter it seems as though its sole purpose is for taking selfies and nothing else. That being said, it is not designed for very high altitude flights.
So let’s look at the hardware specs of this little selfie bot in a bit more detail. The central processor is a 2.3 gigahertz four core Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. Mounted inside the Hover Camera is a 13 megapixel camera that is capable of shooting up to 4K resolution video at a frame rate of 30 FPS (frames per second). The electronics are air-cooled by air that is funneled in the four high speed propellers.
There is also image stabilization technology built into the Hover Camera in the form of a single axis gimbal. So, the next time your camera drone experiences mild turbulence while trying to take pictures or shoot that short video of you attempting to juggle your Grandma’s expensive China while riding on a unicycle, the single axis gimbal will ensure that the camera itself is as still as possible so that it may be able to take those great shots.
Zero Zero also implemented a SLAM algorithm also known as Simultaneous Location and Mapping, in with the camera’s electronics. The SLAM algorithm would essentially scan its environment and it would automatically detect people’s faces and bodies. The SLAM algorithm would then assist and keep the Hover Camera in a stable position while in flight as it is taking your picture or video. This is a great feature (and major differentiator) seeing that it takes the headache of flying a camera drone away from the human and makes the camera drone self-aware of its environment. In other words the Hover Camera selfie bot virtually flies by itself and it is programmed to focus and follow around the object that has to be recorded.
At present the current battery can give you up to eight minutes of flight time which is perfect for taking short video clips and pictures.
Zero Zero also plans to sell the Hover Camera for somewhere under just under $600 and pre-orders will start sometime in the summer of 2016.