For the love of selfies, Christopher Kohstall, a physics teacher from Stanford University with colleagues Jelena Jovanovic and Michael Niedermayr have engineered the world’s first wearable drone that can fly high to take your photographs.
According to Daily Mail, the wearable drone called Nixie folds up and attaches to a wrist strap and when the user wants it to start filming or photographing, they press a button and the drone unfolds and flies off, filming its owner using a camera, and tracking their movements using motion sensors. On November 3 Nixie was titled Intel’s annual Make It Wearable competition’s winner, awarding its creating team with $500,000 to help make the prototype a reality, reported the Daily Mail. The prize money is meant to help the winners bring their prototype to market. “This was an experiment to see what we could do in this space and see what kind of creativity we could spawn,” Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich said at the award event.
“We are very happy, humbled and really honoured,” Jelena Jovanovic of Nixie and former employee of Google told MailOnline. “We have all the core functionality of the drone – we’ve solved all of the hardest challenges, we have stable wristbands that can unfold and are stable in flight, and navigation is solved. The next stage is that we have half a million dollars, and we want to make it real, “ said Jovanovic, assuring the final product will be “safe, beautiful and intuitive.”
Nixie has been designed to capture HD (high-definition) quality images, which can also boast a panorama mode for aerial 360 degree visuals. The drones boomerang feature allows taking shots at programmed fixed distances from the owner while the follow-me mode tracks the owner while he/she is in motion, with the most incredible feature being the hover-mode, programmed to snap near-impossible high shots, reported IANS.
“We will target people who do adventure sports like rock climbers, we are offering a lot of value – and we think will be a bit more expensive than a GoPro. Ultimately we want to target the point and shoot camera market, and we want to be in than range. We hope we can revive the camera market,” said post-doctoral researcher, Christopher Kohstall. The researcher has also created an early prototype, which will be developed and is set to undergo further testing later this year. “Nixie is a tiny wearable camera on a wrist band, the wrist straps unfold to create a quad-copter that flies, takes photos or video, then comes back to you. Nixie is in development. Stay tuned!” said Kohstall.
Open Bionics was won second place for bringing customized products to amputees for less than $1,000. ProGlove followed as third runner-up offering an enterprise invention that seeks to reduce physical work stress, improve ergonomics and reduce costly workplace mistakes.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 7th, 2014.
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