Hover 2: Your Standalone Cinematographer

Introduction

The devel­op­ers of the pre­mi­um self­ie drone Hov­er Cam­era Pass­port, via Kick­starter, announced the fundrais­ing for the launch of mass pro­duc­tion of the sec­ond ver­sion of the portable drone. Hov­er 2 is the next gen­er­a­tion of autonomous UAVs with a focus on self­ie aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. A com­plete­ly redesigned mod­el that inher­it­ed from its pre­de­ces­sor only a portable design and exem­plary safe­ty. At the heart of a pow­er­ful flag­ship proces­sor and a rev­o­lu­tion­ary 360º obsta­cle detec­tion and avoid­ance sys­tem, pow­ered by advanced intel­li­gent algo­rithms. Based on the declared poten­tial of the pro­to­type, which con­tin­ues to be brought to mind, I am ready to com­pete with such best­sellers as Sky­dio, DJI Mav­ic Air, Par­rot Anafi and DJI Spark.

The Hov­er Cam­era Pass­port self­ie drone has won Red Dot and iF Design Awards, CES and more.

Peculiarities

• Satel­lite posi­tion­ing GPS/GLONASS
• Qual­com­m’s pow­er­ful flag­ship Snap­drag­on proces­sor
• Intel­li­gent 360º obsta­cle detec­tion and avoid­ance sys­tem
• Retractable opti­cal radar
• Intel­li­gent Tar­get Track­ing
• 3 × intel­li­gent flight modes
• Hand­held con­troller Palm Pilot
• 12MP 4K cam­era on 1/2.3‑inch CMOS sen­sor
• Image sta­bi­liza­tion: 2‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal + EIS
• HDR pho­to mode
• Pop­py. bitrate 100Mbps
• Max. FPV removal dis­tance 5km
• Max. flight time 23 min­utes
• Inter­change­able rotor guards and land­ing legs
• Built-in stor­age 8GB + exter­nal stor­age up to 128GB
• Mobile appli­ca­tion with a set of tools for edit­ing footage
• Weight 490 gr
• Ready to fly out of the box

Equipment

At the time of the launch of the start­up, the devel­op­er offers 5 con­fig­u­ra­tion options for Hov­er 2:

Essential

standard

Palm Pilot

Blast off

superuser

Specification

Drone

Fold­ed dimen­sions:

230×45×172mm

The weight:

490 gr

Max. flight time:

23 min

Max. removal dis­tance (Palm Pilot/BlastOff):

100m/5km

Stor­age (built-in/ex­ter­nal):

8GB/up to 128GB

Satel­lite posi­tion­ing:

GPS/GLONASS

suspension

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

2‑axis mechan­i­cal + elec­tron­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion (EIS)

Cus­tom con­trol range:

-90° to 0°

Recognition and avoidance of obstacles

Opti­cal radar:

360°

Camera

Matrix:

1/2.3″ CMOS; Eff. pix­els 12 mil­lion

Lens:

FOV 78.8°; Equiv­a­lent focal length: 28mm; Aper­ture: f/2.2

Shoot­ing modes:

Ser­i­al
HDR

Video res­o­lu­tion:

4K: 3840 × 2160 at 30 fps
2.7K: 2720 ​​× 1530 at 30/60fps
1080P: 1920 × 1080 at 30/60/120 fps
720P: 1280 × 720 at 30/60/120 fps

Max. bitrate:

100Mbps

Pho­to For­mat:

JPEG
RAW(DNG)
RAW+JPEG

Video For­mat:

MP4

Appearance

Motors

The Hov­er 2 quad­copter is equipped with brush­less motors. The devel­op­er has not yet dis­closed per­for­mance infor­ma­tion.

Camera

On board is a 12MP 4K cam­era built on a 1/2.3‑inch CMOS sen­sor with f/2.2 aper­ture. and a view­ing angle of 78.8°. Image sta­bi­liza­tion is han­dled by a 2‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal work­ing in tan­dem with Elec­tron­ic Image Sta­bi­liza­tion (EIS). Pro­vide sta­bi­lized shoot­ing in res­o­lu­tion: 4K at 30 fps; 2.7K at 30/60 fps; 1080P@30/60/120fps; 720P at 30/60/120 fps. Avail­able pho­to shoot­ing modes: Burst / HDR. All record­ed mate­r­i­al can be stored on the drone’s built-in stor­age with a capac­i­ty of 8GB, as well as on a microSD card with a capac­i­ty of up to 120GB.

The qual­i­ty of shoot­ing the pro­to­type is not the final result and it con­tin­ues to be final­ized.

FPV

First-per­son flight for Hov­er 2 is imple­ment­ed via Wi-Fi using a tan­dem con­sist­ing of BlastOff con­trol equip­ment and a smart­phone (IOS / Android) via a mobile appli­ca­tion. With this pilot­ing option, the FPV dis­tance ranges from 2–5km.

Intelligent Flight Modes

The user has 3 intel­li­gent flight modes:

auto frame – choose one of four pre­set angles: Waist-Up, Full-body, Back­drop and Birds-eye and the drone will auto­mat­i­cal­ly take the right posi­tion to get a good shot.

Omni Fol­low – keeps the select­ed sub­ject in the frame from any angle, allow­ing greater free­dom of move­ment and cre­ativ­i­ty. Unlike tra­di­tion­al fol­low-behind sub­ject, Hov­er 2 can fol­low the front, back, side, and can also switch between posi­tions dur­ing the shoot­ing.

track­shots — Choose from four pre­set modes: Surge, Ric­o­chet, Reveal and Orbit to real­ize shoot­ing with cin­e­mat­ic flair. Hov­er 2 focus­es on the user and can move around even when the sub­ject is mov­ing.

Cinematic themes

In the mobile appli­ca­tion, cin­e­mat­ic themes are avail­able, includ­ing all kinds of fil­ters and sound­tracks. Pick a theme and watch your footage turn into a short clip that you can instant­ly share with your friends on pop­u­lar social net­works.

optical radar

The Hov­er 2 Opti­cal Radar is a retractable stereo sen­sor that pro­vides depth per­cep­tion in all direc­tions.

Advanced obstacle avoidance algorithms

Com­bin­ing SLAM 3D map­ping with VIO (Visu­al Iner­tial Odom­e­try), and route plan­ning fea­tures, allowed the drone to move through new envi­ron­ments by iden­ti­fy­ing 360º obsta­cles, as well as bypass them while track­ing the tar­get in real time.

Smart Tracking

The Hov­er 2 com­put­er vision sys­tem is able to accu­rate­ly cap­ture the tar­get, even after sig­nif­i­cant changes in its appear­ance and shape. By sim­u­lat­ing the out­side world and mon­i­tor­ing the sur­round­ing shapes, the devel­op­er’s algo­rithm allows the devel­op­er to accu­rate­ly assess the cause of the obsta­cle and intel­li­gent­ly adjust the track­ing strat­e­gy.

The video below shows intel­li­gent track­ing algo­rithms in action, demon­strat­ing aware­ness of the dis­tance and ori­en­ta­tion of an object, as well as reac­qui­si­tion of a tar­get after it has dis­ap­peared from the sys­tem’s field of view.

Control

The drone can be con­trolled in two ways:

1. BlastOff remote con­trol + smart­phone through the Hov­er 2 mobile app. The tan­dem pro­vides con­fi­dent first-per­son pilot­ing at a dis­tance of 2–5km.
2. Hand­held con­troller Palm Pilot — allows you to con­trol the drone with one hand at times when the use of clas­sic con­trol equip­ment is not rel­e­vant for the user. It has a built-in LCD FPV dis­play to dis­play the image from the on-board cam­era of the drone in real time. Pro­vides a dis­tance of up to 100 meters.

Start of sales and price

Self­ie drone Hov­er 2 is avail­able for pur­chase on the offi­cial web­site of the devel­op­er. Depend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion, prices start at $599. To date, it is not offi­cial­ly deliv­ered to the World!

A photo

Pho­to with self­ie drone Hov­er 2.

Video

Video with self­ie drone Hov­er 2.