Wear a Drone on your Wrist
One of the rules of governing the use of drones for filming is that there must be a licensed pilot and another operator in control of the camera. To be strictly legal there is supposed to be a third ‘spotter’. But if you don’t have a specialist videographer to follow you around or perhaps you are busy pursuing a sport how do take video of the activity?
Perhaps with a Nixie, a flying wrist band which has won Intel's inaugural Make it Wearable competition.
It's the brainchild of Christoph Kohstall, a Stanford University researcher in experimental quantum optics and founder of Nixie.
“With a gesture you should be able to get the Nixie to unfold and take off from your wrist,” he explains in an online video . “It knows where you are. It takes a picture of you, and comes back to you. You catch it put it back on your wrist.”
Kohstall is using the $500,000 prize money to turn his idea into commercial reality.
Make It Wearable Finalists | Meet Team Nixie
The idea is a neat convergence of two trends – wearable computing and UAV's - which are apparently the must have item this Christmas for men who like gadgets.
The idea of having drones respond to a person's location with sensors and to follow them around is not new and could be applied to sports events. Starting with extreme sports like skiing and mountain bike racing drones programmed to follow a short distance away from competitors could transmit live video of the performance. It's not too much of a leap to see how drones could also usurp the cabled aerial camera systems in sports stadia.
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