Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Dronestagram, a drone photography sharing website and community has collaborated with National Geographic to pick the best pictures out of thousands of entries. the categories – which include people, nature and urban context – showcase a selection of impressive perspectives. from the windings roads of transylvania to lily ponds in vietnam, the shortlist presents the best seen footage from way up high.

In the infancy of the drone era, we’re still only certain about a handful of specific use cases. Choreographed drone dancing probably wasn’t one of them, unless you’re with MicroAd, the company that created this artful waltz of LED-laden drones in front of Mt. Fuji.

The production featured over 16,500 LED lights on over 20 drones that then launched into a choreographed performance at the foot of Mt. Fuji. The spectacle offered the perfect juxtaposition of old and new and an innovative way for MicroAd to show of its new Sky Magic Drone.

As the drones move through the night sky in conjunction with a band playing the Samisen (traditional Japanese guitar), it imparts a feeling of futuristic wonder that, for just a second, reminds you of the awe-inspiring power conceived at the intersection of tech and creativity....

Advertisers have found ways to bombard us with promotions no matter what we’re doing: watching TV, checking social media, and even when streaming music. But the future of advertising could be even more invasive when the next public event you attend is full of flying video drones projecting inescapable video everywhere you look.

NTT Docomo, one of Japan’s largest wireless carriers, created this unique flying sphere that’s surrounded by eight curved LED strips that can spin at high speed while it’s flying. (As light and thin as LCD displays have become, they’re still relatively heavy for a battery-powered drone to hoist into the air.) This approach can create what is essentially a flying video screen with minimal weight to improve battery life and flight times. The design also allows the drone’s propellers to be hidden inside, so as not to obstruct images or videos being displayed.

The image resolution on this 35-inch-wide prototype is limited to just 144 x 136 pixels—lower resolution than even the Apple Watch’s tiny screen. So if you were hoping one of these drones could follow you around letting you binge on Netflix all day, you won’t have the best experience. But as the technology improves, eventually this flying video drone could reach HD resolutions, and maybe even 4K....

The Internet of Things is not only a land-based phenomenon, but major brands are looking to use hundreds of drones at a time to produce messaging in one form or another.

 

Think interactive, flying billboards.

 

Earlier this month, Intel showed its video of 500 drones flying in formation at night in Germany. The LED lights on the drones spelled out the word ‘Intel.’

 

That was the first known example of a mass of hundreds of drones being used to portray a company logo in the sky at night.

 

A version of that drone light show is now moving to Walt Disney World in Orlando....

"The U.K. is a leader in enabling drone innovation," Amazon crowed.

Amazon has said it would pioneer package delivery by drone overseas if the U.S. continues to block its methods stateside. Now it’s taking another step down that path.

The online retail giant announced Monday evening that it had reached an agreement with the U.K. government to expand the types of drone tests it is conducting in the region. The new arrangement will allow Amazon to test drone flights that extend beyond the line of sight of the pilot in suburban or rural areas — a necessary ingredient in the aerial delivery of packages that the U.S.’s Federal Aviation Administration currently doesn’t allow....

Dronestagram, a drone photography sharing website, recently announced the winners of its annual contest, and the photos are incredible.

Contest categories included nature, sports, and travel, with the winners of each category awarded the opportunity to have their photographs featured in National Geographic. They also received a new drone or drone gear, depending on which place they won.

The photographs were judged by a National Geographic editor, a National Geographic photographer, and Dronestagram's co-founders, Eric Dupin and Guillaume Jarret. This was the international contest's third year....

MMost popular consumer drones are affordable quadcopters robust enough to fly outdoors and snap photos or video. But they don’t work very well inside buildings. The startup Zero Zero Robotics is coming out of stealth mode to announce its first product, Hover Camera, a small drone specifically designed with no exposed propellers to safely shoot footage indoors.

Hover does exactly what it sounds like: Turn it on and it hovers in midair wherever you leave it. Hover is more a flying camera than a joyriding drone, and the controls on its paired smartphone app are for delicately repositioning it, not zooming to atrial heights. But the real breakthrough feature is its sophisticated AI programming that not only keeps the platform exceedingly leve, it uses face and body recognition to lock on to a subject and slowly follow them around autonomously.

"We had a few design goals in mind: Create a personal flying camera that’s portable and very safe, but also super easy to use for everyone," says the CEO and founder of Zero Zero Robotics, Meng Qiu Wang. "Most of the drones on the market fall short in these three aspects. We wanted to up the game to the next level...."