You never know when a drone could come in handy, so having one in your shirt’s pocket at all times may not be such a bad idea. AeriCam created one that folds up to fit there.
Considering the direction our society is heading to, I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up spying on one another. After all, living all day long with paranoia and thinking that all our governments do is spy on us might determine us to start doing our own surveillance, or rather sousveillance. With that in mind, San Francisco-based drone company AeriCam jumped in to help us prepare for that moment and developed a quad-copter with foldable rotors.
Since in its compact form the Anura drone is not much larger than an iPhone, it can be stored away quite easily. Most drone manufacturers must have jumped to the conclusion that there’s not much more to be improved when it comes to the basic design of their products, and proceeded to creating drone accessories. AeriCam, however, figured out that the drone’s rotors don’t need to be fixed, and enabling them to fold up would make the UAV more portable.
In order to control the Anura drone, users need to pair it with an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet via Wi-Fi. The companion app does more than just controlling the drone, though. Since Anura is equipped with a micro-camera, whatever video is picked by it gets streamed directly to the smartphone. If this doesn’t make it clear that the drone has been developed with espionage (or at least voyeurism) in mind, I don’t know what will.
Given the type of wireless connection it uses, the drone doesn’t have that great of a range, being able to fly up to 25m away from the smartphone. The battery life isn’t that impressive either, AeriCam claiming that a full charge will keep the drone flying for up to 10 minutes.
Conspiracy theories aside, I hope that armies won’t ever consider adopting this design for a weaponized drone that folds up to fit in soldiers’ pocket.
A crowdfunding campaign for the Anura drone will be launched later this month, and provided it will be a successful one, backers who pledge more than $200 will get their foldable UAV sometime next year.
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