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MeCam: A $49 voice-controlled quadrotor

Posted by John Wiseman on January 25, 2013 at 1:25am

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.

control, mecam, voice

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Comments

Joshua Johnson January 30, 2013 at 5:44am

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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Jack Crossfire January 26, 2013 at 8:34pm

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.
John Wiseman January 26, 2013 at 11:20am

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.

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Kal January 26, 2013 at 9:42am

I think it's pretty telling that the only feature they actually demo in the video is that it can take off.

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.
Jack Crossfire January 26, 2013 at 3:58am

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...

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Dave Wicks January 25, 2013 at 8:04pm

From developers site:

"One click panoramic"

"Perfect at first try"

If this is legit, I'll take two!
Dave Wicks January 25, 2013 at 7:56pm

The camera I attached to my QR ladybird was exactly that size and to be honest this setup looks very similar. I do however find the price point to be very unrealistic.
John Wiseman January 25, 2013 at 2:54pm

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?
Jack Crossfire January 25, 2013 at 2:18pm

If only there was really a wifi camera that small.
John Wiseman January 25, 2013 at 12:01pm

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).