time flies with 'nixie' - the wearable camera drone that takes off from the wrist

time flies with ‘nixie’ – the wearable camera drone that takes off from the wrist
video courtesy of intel

‘nixie’ is a wearable camera drone that can fly from your wrist whenever you wish. the tiny quadcopter technology is able to take video or pictures in the air and it only takes a gesture to set it off. it hasn’t been brought to the market yet, but according to the development team it is almost there.

‘nixie’s‘ developers became the winning team against over 500 other participants during intel’s ‘make it wearable competition’ two years ago, thus securing funding to develop the concept into a product. the developers stated their goal to develop the drone into the next generation of point-and-shoot cameras. motion-prediction algorithms and sensors are used to guide ‘nixie’ along one of four pre-programmed paths for taking photos or video, namely, boomerang mode, panorama mode, follow me mode and hover mode.

it weighs less that 45 g (0.1 lb), can capture full HD images or video, plus can connect with a smartphone. the overall goal for the project was building a light, portable, and user-friendly drone that could serve as a ‘personal photographer’. accordingly, the drone was named after a playful water spirit nixie of germanic mythology. in the media, ‘nixie’ has been described as a ‘wearable selfie drone’ and as a ‘wearable camera drone’. however, the developers have emphasized that ‘nixie’ is intended not only for selfies, but for taking photographs worthy of framing, plus videos.