Robotics
Running With the Hexo+ Drone
Spectrum tests a prototype of the Hexo+ selfie-taking drone
31 Dec 2014
When I visited the Hexo+ team in Grenoble in late September 2014, they took me to a grassy field on the outskirts of the city to demonstrate a prototype. The actual Hexo+ design was then some months away from being finalized, so they flew Iris quadcopters from 3D Robotics, programmed with the Hexo+ software for taking selfie videos from on high. As can be seen in this video, the algorithms they used for tracking the subject and keeping him or her in the frame still had some rough edges at that point. Presumably the results you can get with a Hexo+ are better now.
David Schneider is a former editor at IEEE Spectrum, and continues to contribute Hands On articles. He holds a bachelor's degree in geology from Yale, a master's in engineering from UC Berkeley, and a doctorate in geology from Columbia.