Does the GoPro Drone First Footage Suggest Obstacle Avoidance?

Round about this time last year I got really excited about GoPro announcing a new drone that they will launch in 2015. A bit too excited I guess because I purchased shares of GoPro and if you have been following the price trends of the stock you know that I am not a happy camper.

But that’s my problem, I am still interested in seeing what the alpha male of action camera innovation will come up with when it comes to a quadcopter as I assume that is what it’s going to be. And here is the issue. It’s been a year and GoPro never released any design concept images or anything for that matter. Until now. And what do we get now? An aerial video which was obviously captured with a GoPro on some multicopter, hopefully really a GoPro drone.

Ok, enough of the mumbling. What do we see and what to do we learn from the video released Yesterday? The description says: “This featured video was captured with a developmental prototype of GoPro’s quadcopter and stabilization system. No post-production stabilization was implemented…”. Ok, so they ARE developing it. Good news. The footage will be stabilized. That’s bottom line and I personally would love to learn what kind of gimbal stabilization are they going to use as DJI openly cut off ties with GoPro by announcing the new DJI Phantom 3 line with all factory cameras. In fact, that could have been a factor in the sloppy share price as well.

The video is only available on YouTube in 1440p HD resolution. Is that an indicator that the GoPro drone will not have 4K capabilities? I doubt that as GoPro is best at recording video, the challenges will lie in the aeromodeling bit of innovation where even DJI and 3DR is struggling to find talent.

The only other thing I have noticed about the video is that it’s nice, but seems to be either slow motion or the result of very careful flying. Which is ok, after all this is not a TBS FPV drone video. Many of the scenes in the video have been filmed in a forest or near other objects. It’s wishful thinking but I hope it could mean that the GoPro drone will have obstacle avoidance. Yeah, I know that it’s a long shot, but it would be a killer feature that would place GoPro among the frontrunners of aerial imaging robots or “drones” as they are commonly known.

Watch the video and feel free to comment or speculate!