A Drone is something that many people are familiar with these days and different kinds of drones usually do one amazing thing as a specialty. This could be taking 4k videos or being able to swerve around obstacles. Now, Percepto, an Israeli business, is trying to bring brand new functions to their drones by adding an open source camera that can be attached to it and controlled by a drone app.
The thought is that these drones will use special Computer Vision built into a device that can be attached to DJI Phantom drones. Percepto wants to make its drones more advanced through Computer Vision. Computer Vision is a type of technology that is expected to be used differently than any previous form of drone technology because it helps drones do more than one thing at a time through a special device.
What is Computer Vision? It is a black box that weighs about 140 grams or five ounces and holds an NVIDIA Tegra KI-based processing unit, as well as a 640×480-resolution video camera that shoots video clips at 120 frames a second.
Computer Vision can be hooked onto a DJI Phantom drone, as well as used with the Spreading Wings line of drones, or with the 3DRobotics’ Iris Plus, and the X8 or specific Walkera drone models. It is expected to make these types of drones more functional and capable of running several apps just as a smartphone is capable of running.
The apps that could be downloaded would come from the Percepto Marketplace. Percepto says that it is possible that eventually their company could be the place where everyone goes for apps for drones that can make a drone capable of doing all kinds of things.
These could include things like scanning streets to find a parking place, picking up balls in a game of tennis, etc. The main goal is for companies to be able to build drones that can do several things depending on the app you download, instead of all of the drones being specialized to do only one thing at a time.
Percepto also wants to bring down the walls that developers have faced when they have lots of ideas for drones, but don’t have the proper hardware, resources or talent to bring that idea into reality. Instead, they could just download one of Percepto’s handy drone apps and make a generic drone do what they want it to do.
To start things going with their ideas for drones to be more functional, Percepto has plans to send out their Computer Vision device complete with two apps they have created. One of these apps has a “follow me” feature and the other app includes a flight guidance feature and an obstacle awareness feature.
However, Percepto needs enough money to make this happen and it is raising money via a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, and wants to raise $60,000. If someone pledges at least $359 then they could have one of Percepto’s inventions by October 2015.