There is now a drone specifically designed for selfies. It was bound to happen at some point, but did it have to happen like this?
There's a lot going on in this ad. I don't know how many of you have ever been to one of these cool, underground breakdance or bike-around-in-a-circle parties before, but it seems like an inappropriate time to break out a $400 piece of flying video equipment. Video equipment may be a bit of an exaggeration, however, as the Roam-E is more like a glorified selfie stick. Perhaps most troubling is the shape of the drone, which as The Verge so eloquently points out, looks like a "flying phallus."
The Roam-E.
Aside from its unfortunate form, the design is clever enough. It's the first drone of its kind to feature collapsible rotor blades, making it easily transportable. It uses "high-tech" facial recognition technology to track users to get that perfect social media angle. It can fully charge in two hours and is capable of staying in airborne for 20 minutes at a time; as a result, it can take "perfectly uninterrupted panoramic shots" from its 1080p camera.
You can live-stream from the camera, too. It's controlled by an app where you have not one but four flying modes: selfie (of course), pilot, scout, and navigation.
Just the tip.
It's still an awful lot of trouble to go through for the sake of a "hands-free selfie." Not to mention an awful lot of money, especially when you consider the Chinese electronic company Xiaomi's plans to release a $460 4K raw shooting quadcopter later this summer. (That's a $60 difference.)
