Technology News

Vantage Robotics Launches 4K Video Drone Called ‘Snap’

Snap By Vantage Robotics

Earlier today, San Francisco-based Vantage Robotics announced the launch of its new flying camera, Snap.

According to a company press release, Vantage Robotics CEO and co-founder Tobin Fisher’s inspiration for Snap came from a quadrotor injury in which he cut his hand on a spinning blade. That was three years ago. One year later, development of the new drone began.

In order to bring his vision of a safe and easy to use camera drone into the world, Fisher teamed up with fellow co-founder and CTO Joe van Niekerk. Joe has a background in designing high-end gimbals for military drones, not to mention the fact that he’s a DARPA Grand Challenge winner. Together, the pair established a team of Stanford-trained engineers and designers to help create their gimbal-stabilized flying video camera.

The result of their combined effort has produced a safely packaged portable drone with a 4K quality gimbal-stabilized camera that is capable of flying for 20-minutes at a time, traveling at speeds up to 30 miles per hour and accelerating faster than a Ferrari.

Fisher was quoted in his company’s press release as having said that their goal was to create “a flying camera that was actually safe to use” around people because humans “are the most interesting” video subjects.

People are the most interesting subjects for any video, so we wanted to make a flying camera that was actually safe to use around them (…) Whether you’re a professional photographer or athlete, or simply looking to capture the moment in a unique way, Snap fits in the smallest backpack and provides beautiful 4K imagery, without weighing you down.

Snap weighs in at just 1.1 pounds and can be folded up into a condensed state, allowing it to fit into small spaces including backpacks.

While the new lightweight aerial camera offers users the ability to control it with a smartphone running iOS or Android, manual control is made unnecessary by Snap’s unique auto-tracking modes. That’s right, you can actually sit back and let Snap do all of the flying.

Snap drones, which are expected to ship come Spring of 2016, are presently available for pre-order on the company’s website and while the price tag is currently listed at $895, the company noted in its press release that the pre-order price won’t last forever, as the limited time offer will eventually rise hundreds of dollars to a retail price of $1,295.

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