Drone makers become Camera makers and compete with GoPro.

Part II 

Consumer Drones are all about the cameras

The DJI Inspire1 

The #CESdrones have leaders and followers.  Last year there were only a few OEM's. This year there was a mob of them.  Drones were seen in almost every hall.  The market for consumer drones is growing exponentially.  It has revealed a clear winner in these early stages of unmanned systems. It has shown that DJI Global has captured the largest market share of the consumer business. Most consumer drones are purchased for capturing imagery and DJI has risen to the top of that segment.

DJI Phantom series Vision+ platform with proprietary camera and RAW image support.

I saw drones everywhere from the first hour I walked around the show floor, which was during setup on the day before the show opened to the public. In every building and almost every show hall until the show ended. The only place drones were not seen, was in the skies over Las Vegas.  The area has very strict and well known rules forbidding unmanned systems from flying there.  Inside the Las Vegas Convention Center flying was allowed for those who had a protected area, designed for safe demo flying. (Attendees were not allowed to fly)  

DJI Global's X3/ FC350 camera mounted on a prototype handheld gimbal

Over the past 2 years DJI has actually specialized in photographic drones so much, that they are now a camera OEM, as well.  It started with their FC40 camera.  Then they released the Vision+ camera, and now it is the Inspire1's camera called the X3 model #FC350. This is the companies first 4k offering and they even showed a prototype handheld gimbal for it at their CES booth.

Sprite Limited is an action camera OEM and new Drone manufacturer

Copying is a Form of Flattery or a Market Strategy?

It is kind of ironic that DJI has become a small sensor camera manufacturer, because they are being treated very much like GoPro.  Other manufacturers are copying DJI Global product's look and features.  When I asked one booth attendant what the difference was from the DJI model, she said "It's Cheaper!!!"  That is probably a very true statement.  Companies that copy product designs  and release them as cheaper alternatives, are not good at making them work as well as the originals.  They lack the software and user design features that make the original worth owning. Some drone OEM's even fail to include basic safety features that are key to making the original a good seller.

AeroView's Product line at CES (notice no round edges in this copy)

So, if DJI Global owns market share who else is in the game?

The only other major manufacturer at CES this year was Parrot.  With 3D Robotics not showing and Walkera having a very small booth, with a useless crew, not much else was here from the top players.  It was like DJI scared them all away. Several specialized OEM's represented this year, including Harwar and Hubsan. The biggest contingent on the 2015 CES show floor were crowd funded & award winning drone companies like Nixie, Hexo+, AirDog, Ghost, and Zano.

Hexo+ is a crowd funded follow drone system. (A drone designed to follow and image you)

Why was 3D Robotics a no-show for CES2015?  There have been a few speculations, but most likely it is a combination of product cycle and money. 3DR had no real new products to show this year, and CES is expensive, as well as time consuming.  Many companies take a year off the show floor, when they are in development cycles.  The other expected new OEM was GoPro, but they did not offer any news of a drone in their future.  The interesting thing was that they also did not deny that they were working on one.  That is not much to go on, but since DJI is making their own cameras and testing handheld gimbals, GoPro might be losing aerial purposed sales.  I guess there is only so much you can assume about things that were NOT at CES.  You never know what is coming next in this arena.  I hope we see less copies and more innovation.

Lets see some New Drones

Parrot Showed off their Exom system for mapping and filming using SenseFly.

A closer look at the Parrot Exom camera

Parrot is not just a drone OEM, they are born from an Automotive Infotainment group that also makes consumer products for smartphones and tablets.  Now they are a camera OEM, as you can see from their Exom and Beebop products.

Parrot Beebop Drone with proprietary camera. It features image stabilization without a gimbal

If the CES booth told us anything, it is that Parrot is getting into mapping this year.  They showed several platforms that can use their SenseFly system, including the Ebee Agricultural Mapping fixed wing platform.

Parrot Ebee Mapping Platform (uses the SenseFly system like the Exom model)

Parrot showed their mapping and camera prowess with realtime 3D mapping demo based on the Nvidia Tegra Chipset.  The project uses 2 BeeBop cameras to do stereo-imaging, and provides a real time visual output of the image building.  Mapping is the next big thing for unmanned aerial systems. 3D and "4D" mapping are going to be a huge part of the mapping innovations coming out. (4D mapping is 3D mapping with a 4th dimension of information) 

Parrot BeeBop 3D Mapping project powered by Nvidia Tegra

Walkera was at the show, but had a very small booth. They did present a new flagship product called Voyager3.  The booth attendants were not very helpful and knew almost nothing about the new offering.  

Walkera's Voyager3 with a proprietary camera that lowers as the landing gear raises.

From what I was able to find out, the new platform will have a 4K camera and retracting landing gear. The proprietary camera will lower as the legs raise providing a 360 degree unobstructed rotation.  The final configuration of this new aircraft looks very similar to the Inspire1 from DJI.  The features are very different and do not seem to be as good as the Inspire1.  In their defense, Walkera did say that this product was still under development.

DJI's Inspire1 being presented on stage by Eric Cheng director of Photography at DJI

DJI shipped their first batch of pre-ordered Inspire1 drones just days before the show.  The Inspire1 was announced and demonstrated back in the fall. The expected release date in December was missed due to something going wrong with the production.  The exact reason was never really specified, but the result was surely a better released product and a lot of angry customers.  Those angry customers would have been much worse off if DJI did ship on time.  It was a hard time for DJI, but a good decision in the long run.  Now Inspire1 is shipping the production unit and I have been told by several Beta unit pilots that the new one is much better at everything.  I got to fly an Inspire1 Beta unit about a week before writing this. I saw some of the issues with it and it was still one of the best machines I have ever flown.

Harwar industrial drone used by border patrol and private security firms

Harwar was one the specialized OEM's on the show floor, but they really don't make consumer aircraft. Their main business is commercial use drones for surveillance.

Hubsan X4 Pro with a feature so important they had to write it down on a piece of paper

Hubsan showed off quite a few drone models in their booth.  They had minidrones, fixed wing styles and this curious model called the X4 Pro. The main feature was 4K live video that you can share.  Considering that there is no way to transmit true live 4K video I am sure the transmission is not 4K just the source.  They could give me no information to back up this hand written sign.

Hubsan's GPS Spy Hawk 

To summarize the consumer drones at CES this year, I would have to say that there is starting to be a real crossover between the unmanned systems space and the action camera space.  The biggest thing I saw in drones was new cameras. Less and less aerial platforms are using GoPro's and are instead starting to make their own cameras.  There is even a couple of camera manufacturers that are now making drones, like Sprite Limited and AEE.  

Sprite Limited is an action camera OEM that now makes drones.

These two markets are going to become more and more blurred over time. A drone is nothing more than a tripod for a small sensor camera. But a tripod that you can move in 3D space. The two products are in need of the other.  A drone without a camera is as bad as a camera without a view.  After seeing all this camera and drone crossover happening, it is hard to imagine that GoPro is not making their own drone platform.  There were also news stories that popped up back in November on the Wall Street Journal that hinted about this possibility.

Action camera OEM AEE  is now a drone OEM as well.

Stay tuned for my next report on the drones of CES. We will talk about the crowd funded drone phenomena.

Trace Live Networks claim to be a content company whose main product is a social network and a camera platform.  It was easily the most forward thinking camera OEM's that had a drone aspect.  One of their cameras is mounted in a follow drone. Their main focus is the live aspect and sharing live streams through their social platform. I think that this combination of social content and drones is here to stay.  DJI already has one such project, www.skypixel.com.

George Krieger is a tech enthusiast, teacher of Aerial Imagery as a Master at TheArcanum.com and a photographer, that has used capturing imagery as a way to do physical therapy.  All images copyright 2015 George Krieger.

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CES Friday

(or....A technology preview of the Detroit Autoshow)

Last day of CES and time to Burn Rubber with the CES Auto Show! I saw more cars and wheeled exhibits 2 and 4 wheels this week than ever before at CES.

Consumer Electronics have made their way into cars for decades but this year things are getting different as the cars are adapting mobile operating systems like android and IOS to the vehicles for more than just entertainment.  We will now be able to operate the vehicle with these devices controlling things like the climate and the different camera views currently.  Functionality will spread quickly, as we will see next week at the Detroit Auto Show, I am sure. Expect to be able to do much more with android and ios in the car than just GPS.  The Tesla has a large 11" tablet in the dash and more are coming.

We saw some new 2 wheeled vehicles for the IOS system mostly that looked like this (and several variations) but seemed useless for anything but a single level room or office the only one with a defined purpose was medical and allowed the doctor to do rounds remotely. Siri on Wheels!

 We also saw many traditional vehicles with killer sound systems and what we are used to seeing in car electronics.... entertainment based devices and systems...

 Some electronics exhibitors did not bring a car so they had a dashboard on a stand like this

Many of the manufacturers found themselves with a CES booth the week before Detroit's huge auto show and inviting the tech bloggers to continue on the the auto show after CES

Most of the better tech outlets will have auto show representation and some will even do shows from there.

Ford is going further at CES

 The coolest car on the floor was the Audi R-18 E-Tron Quattro. This was Audi's 2012 entrant for the 24 hours of Le Mans and in the American Le Mans Series Le Mans Prototype (LMP1) Class. It is also the first closed cockpit LMP that Audi have released in decades.

While many were taking pictures of the Hybrid racing beast there also were quite a few taking advantage of the little SUV shaped USB drive Audi gave to many of us.  The white light everywhere made this a very hard shot.

Audi was not the only group to bring a race car to the show floor this year we had more than ever all over CES not just in the north hall...

 Today we saw that the infiltration of technology into automobiles has reached the point where it reaches the consumer level. Prior to this time electronics were in cars mostly to help the engine run better and to give more stability and control to the drivers standard controls.  These days the functions of in-car electronics are more accessible to the consumer and finally they are helping us control facets of the vehicle and its environment.  They are providing less static and more dynamic real-time feedback or displays providing the driver with more information and therefore and better experience overall. Out with the "idiot lights" and in with the touchscreen data display to visually inform you.  

I can imagine a few advances you will see in the near future from shows like these. If you take the Vuzix future product which is an eyeglass peripheral for your smart phone and build it into the windshield as a Heads Up Display linking all of your apps and mapping on your phone to your car as a control and viewing platform we would have a really cool way to interface with our data while driving.  Adding an augmented reality layer can give us driving vacations that are not boring drives to the destination, but rather an informative educational background on the location as you drive and letting you know when to look or stop on the way to see the important sights you may pass by otherwise.  For now we are driving the vehicle ourselves so this limits out ability to utilize some forms of mobile computing in the car. In the future when we are all in self-driving cars then the whole trend will have even more context in our daily lives. Bottom line we will see many more consumer and safety products in our vehicles going forward. Expect the north hall of CES to become more of a car show every year for a while as well.

Friday was also a day to see things other than cars like Nikon's camera display

The coolest thing that Nikon had to view was this Nikon D4 cut in half including the lens. Not really much new from last year from what I saw.

One other theme I have not touched on this week was the immense amount of waterfalls and aquariums sporting waterproofing for devices.

They all seem to work and many of the ideas like a glorified Ziploc bag are old school while many are new polymer technology...

Just before it was time to go and leave the CES show floor for the last time in 2013 we stopped at our base camp for resting posting and regrouping the Samsung Smart Lounge. What a great program Samsung has built over the past year. These lounges were an experiment at first but now they seem to be part of Samsung's profile and image at these events like CES and IFA.

Can't wait until next year!!!! CES 2014 January 7th-10th

One final thought for the last day of CES concerns a common question to me this week from my friends.

Where are the videos of all the cool new toys???

I did not take video this trip like last year.

If you want to see videos of many of the devices I saw in person then head over to MobileGeeks where Nicole Scott, Sascha Pallenberg, Carsten Drees and the whole MobileGeeks team made over 100 videos last week. Nicole will show you all the coolest things and give you a hands on look in most cases. Just head over to www.mobilegeeks.com or the German edition www.mobilegeeks.de. This was their first CES as a team and a site and they kicked butt all week long. Judge for your self, but I think these guys are on their way up as a resource for mobile device news and information year round. It looks like Ford and Intel agree as they are sponsors for the site along with a host of other household names in tech.

Just one thing left to do after dinner...

...see a mermaid show at a casino fish tank what else?