Crowdfunded Drones: The KickStarter Splash Drone and More
Crowdfunded Drones will have success in 2015. You only have to look at the KickStarter Splash Drone to understand that this is true. I often check out KickStarter and IndieGogo to see what ideas are floating around in this space. We have spoken about the KickStarter Splash Drone a few times because it is truly an amazing success in terms of donations.
Here is a summary of a few of the crowd funded drone projects that have caught our eye.
KickStarter Splash Drone
We had to start here. With five days to go in their fundraising they have achieved 1249% of their fundraising target, now having brought in $218,588.
As you may recall, the “Splash Drone is a waterproof drone with live video feed, payload release mechanism, emergency flare system and camera stabilization gimbal”.
I may need to buy one.
As a reminder ”
The Splash Drone comes in two flavors, traditional remote control or app based control to unlock its autonomous features.
Standard Remote Control Version: Allows you to fly in GPS assisted mode, attitude mode, or hover over one position to capture your action. It also has return to launch location and automatically lands at the flip of a switch.
App based Control: Your Android device allows you to use the Splash Drone’s autonomous features with an app that lets your fly a mission on a set path of activate the Follow Me mode.”
The Ares Drone
The Ares Drone is claiming it will be the easiest drone to fly, “if you can draw you can fly.”. It also notes:
“Capturing amazing aerial shots has never been easier. Just draw where you want to fly on your iPhone or iPad. Our drone does the rest.”
The Ares team notes in their KickStarter pitch:
“Ares makes it easier than any drone on the market to fly and capture high resolution aerial photos and video. In just three easy steps, you can plan your flight and launch Ares.
Once you press the launch button in the app, the drone will follow your drawn flight path and capture high resolution photos or video. While the drone is landing itself, the app will automatically download the content you just captured (Ares HD & 4K only). Then, take the content and share it anywhere, all from one device.”
If this drone is as easy to use as they claim it will be very successful in the market. Note that they are currently at 39% of their target number with 21 days to go.
Air Shepherd Drone
This crowd funded project on IndieGogo has me excited as their mission, as we have noted previously, is to stop Rhino and Elephant funding.
This project is currently 49% funded with ten days to go. They have already raised $244,252 but clearly still have a long way to go.
As the site notes:
“Poachers operate under the cover of night, and until now, rangers have not had an effective way to find them before they kill. We fly drones, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that have infrared cameras and GPS on them and can send back thermal images of animals . . . and poachers. They’re electric, silent and invisible but provide the information operators use to rapidly vector rangers to the location of the poacher before he kills.
It works. Flying in one area where as many as 19 rhinos were killed each month, there have been no deaths – for six months. None at all.
Others have tried and not succeeded, but our Air Shepherd approach is the onlyintervention that has been shown to literally stop poaching. We have demonstrable proof that our drone program works. Quietly developed and tested in southern Africa for over two years with US$ 2 million in investment and over 1000 hours of flying time, we can now say one thing with confidence: where we fly, the poaching stops. Completely.
We’ve also teamed up with University of Maryland mathematicians who have developed the world’s most effective supercomputer-based capability for predicting where poachers will be each night. They invented the capability to predict where roadside bombs would be placed in Iraq and Afghanistan – with over 93% accuracy. Now they’ve applied that pattern recognition to poaching.
We know exactly where to fly – with a very high probability of getting there before the poachers. There is no other capability that even comes close to this.
It’s the combination of carefully tested drone operations and predictive analysis that provides us with a huge advantage over any other approach to stopping poaching in Africa.”
We will keep you up to date on these crowd funded efforts, as well as of other interesting ones as they come along.
Kickstarter Splash Drone
