The MeCam is a $49 quadrotor without a remote control--It can either be controlled via voice commands, or you can put it in "follow me" mode.
The MeCam is a $49 quadrotor without a remote control--It can either be controlled via voice commands, or you can put it in "follow me" mode.
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Hey John Check out my new Page on Diydrones and New Mini heli video I'm trying to incorporate the voice control into my Heli and would love your help so I'm ready for Part 2 of my podcast next Wednesday.
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According to the gizmodo story, http://gizmodo.com/5979208/this-tiny-pet-quadcopter-could-be-your-o...
it sounds like they're just squatting on the patent idea without actually making it work. They want to charge anyone who makes it work a license fee.
Supposedly they're using a Cortex A9 onboard, which is perfectly capable of running simple vision routines. If you're clever about your algorithms (and especially if you have a NEON MPE you can leverage), it's doable.
It won't, of course, perfectly track anyone all the time. But humans have difficulty doing that too :)
Remember that they're looking for someone to license the tech, so I'm guessing $49 is not the retail price.
Vocal recognition doesn't strike me as the most difficult part as much as the image processing required to follow a person. Again, this is something that could be done on the phone, in theory.
There is a wireless camera that small, but purely analog. It wouldn't work with a phone.
http://www.helipal.com/walkera-qr-ladybird-fpv-2-4ghz-green-edition...
"One click panoramic"
"Perfect at first try"
If this is legit, I'll take two!
Jack, have you seen the AR.Drone's camera? It looks like it's probably 1.5x the size of the one from the MeCam photos in each dimension, and it came out what, three years ago?
If only there was really a wifi camera that small.
Yeah, I'm assuming the phone is doing the speech recognition. I've done voice control of a drone, and even when doing recognition on the phone the noise of the motors when it's within 20-30 feet is still a problem (though I was using larger motors).