3D Robotics is thrilled to introduce the Follow Me feature, the latest adventure in autonomous flight. Follow Me mode allows you to be your own one-man aerial film crew: Capture yourself in action, with all the freedom of spontaneity and zero pre-planning, even when there’s no one around to helm the sticks for you. Just select “Follow” in DroidPlanner, strap on your Android phone or throw your tablet in your backpack, and your drone will follow wherever you go—and keep the camera trained on you the whole time! Place your Android device on another vehicle—say a car, boat, or rover—and Follow Me tracks that for you, too.
Best of all, it’s totally free from 3D Robotics, and it’s available today. You just need the beta of the new DroidPlanner 2.0 (free here) and the latest release candidate (3.2 RC 2) version of Arducopter (free here).*
To get the beta of DroidPlanner, please follow these instructions:
To get the latest release candidate of Arducopter, select "Beta software" from the firmware upload screen of Mission Planner or APM Planner.
Both of these will be coming out of beta in a few weeks (after the Sparkfun AVC), so if you'd rather not be using beta software, just sit tight and it will automatically come to you with the next public update.
Follow Me frees you to be yourself, by yourself. Happy flying!
*Please note that as advised in the warning notice in Mission Planner and APM-Planner 2, Beta versions and release candidates are by definition unstable and should only be used by expert operators and only to help the developers test the code during the pre-release test cycle in direct coordination with the developers. In those versions, bugs are very likely to be present and the operator should be aware of a significantly higher operational risk and choose location and operation modes for flights accordingly, as well as be prepared for the possibility of undesired behavior of the aircraft and even a catastrophic failure.
Comments
Looks great but not been able to join the beta. Seem to get a 404 from the link listed above and on google+ groups
2) Become a beta tester
Sorry – nothing to see here.
Looking forward to this! Awesome!
If I have a USB GPS is the ability to add my laptop location still available in APM:Planner. Ive seen it in earlier version of something. Can I track my ground stationlocation with it, so if I have my laptop in the car get the same follow me effect?
Oh...does this join spline and ROI in the next releases (to APM:planner etc) ?
Looks super fun
Thanks!
-P
This is awesome!
Reality supersedes science fiction !!
Great news! will this work on any telemetry? Like TCP/UDP or just 3DR radio ?
Yes, adjustable length offsets are in the official release. The next release (a few weeks) will have arbitrary offsets, which is exactly what you want.
I've been waiting for this for some time now so I'm very excited by this announcement. Thanks so much to those who provided it. I don't suppose by chance my request to have the ability to add offsets to the following distance made it in to the release. I want to follow some rowers on a lake but I don't want it directly overhead. I'd like to be able to program it to have an offset in direction rather than just overhead. Is that possible? Also, this sounds like something new. Is it an improvement over 'Guided' mode? Thanks again. Keep up the great work.
Awesome work!
Does he lock the case with the props sticking out ;)
wOw! Great feature! Now become actual gimbal development w ability visal object tracking (OCV implementation t.e.)
F1P: Yep. Optical object tracking is on its way and coming after AVC. (We're using similar tech to spot and hit the red balloons as part of the competition)
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