By Tekla Perry12 May 2015 16:34 GMTIs Lily a Drone? Or Is It a Camera? Photo: Tekla Perry This Atherton, Calif., garage is home to Lily Robotics; now a five-person startup. Pictured (left to right) are Antoine Balaresque, cofounder and CEO; Henry Bradlow, cofounder and CTO; Nghia Ho, computer vision engineer; and Robb Englin, industrial designer. (Controls engineer Roland O'Flaherty was out of the

Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow are worried. They have developed an autonomous flying video camera for use in filming action sports on land and water, capturing scenery while hiking and sightseeing, and covering family events (so everyone gets in the picture). They think they’ve made it simple enough that a parent could just toss it in the air and forget about it while coaxing a child to take her first steps. They have enough seed money ($1 million in investment) to get the prototype they’ve been developing for the past year into production. The technology is coming along nicely; they’ve been able to hire the experts in computer vision, controls, and industrial design that they need, and they’re on track to ship in February 2016.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that their product looks an awful lot like a drone—and they don’t want to be a drone company, they want to be a camera company.

Says Bradlow: “People buy drones because they want to fly something. That’s not what this is, this is a camera. You frame shots with it; you can’t control its flight.”

There are drones, Balaresque says, that carry cameras. These cameras send images to a cell phone, and users can look at the images while separately using the drones’ flight controls to position them for particular shots. Lily is nothing like that, he insists. You don’t fly it, you take pictures with it.

Balaresque got the idea for the project that became Lily Robotics in 2013. On vacation with his family after graduating from college, he browsed through the photos they’d taken—and realized his mother wasn’t in any of them. Most people would probably think, “Oh, I should take some of the pictures.” But Balaresque, who, despite having been a business major, had worked on a number of robotics projects in college, instead thought, “A robot could solve this problem.” When he got back to California, he contacted Bradlow, with whom he’d worked on several of those collegiate robotics projects, and they started developing Lily.

Photo: Tekla PerryPrototypes of Lily’s autonomous flying camera line a worktable inside the Lily garage.

Lily could be the poster child for a classic Silicon Valley startup. Its founders, fresh out of college (in this case, University of California at Berkeley), met at a hackathon. They are working side-by-side, assembling hardware and coding software, with the company’s first few employees in a crowded garage. The garage sits behind an even more crowded hacker hostel owned, I am told, by a long-retired venture capitalist. The house’s porch is jammed with bikes and Segways and other wheeled vehicles; the grassy lawn around the house is overgrown but spacious—plenty big for testing a drone. A table near the pool, surrounded by mismatched chairs, serves as a conference room; the pool itself is used for testing water takeoffs and landings.

Balaresque and Bradlow started working on their technology shortly after that summer 2013 epiphany. Initially, they focused on developing software, particularly computer vision software, in order to make a camera “watch” the user. Their thinking at that point was that they’d mount it on a commercially available drone. But after about six months of development, they realized that existing drones lacked the processing power needed to handle flight controls and the computer vision system simultaneously. They also wanted a waterproof drone small enough to fit in a normal backpack; that just didn’t exist at the time.

The system they came up with uses a video processor to handle the main, high resolution camera. There are three microcontrollers: one controls the motors to stabilize the drone; the other two control the low-resolution cameras for tracking the user, keeping an eye on the ground in order to manage takeoffs and landings, and providing addional help with stabilizing the gadget. Rounding out the list of parts are an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a barometer, a magnetometer, and a GPS device.

A separate puck, designed to be tucked in a pocket or worn on an arm, tells the drone, via WiFi, whom to track. It first identifies the user’s location with a GPS receiver (though once that happens, the vision system, with a faster response time, does most of the tracking. The puck contains some basic controls: to switch the flying camera from following, to, say, circling, or to trigger it to take off or land. (More precise adjustments can be made with a mobile phone app.). The puck also contains an accelerometer to detect sudden changes in motion such as a jump or a fall. These sensors can be used to switch the camera to slow-motion mode at a critical moment. The puck also carries a microphone so the drone can pick up audio as it’s buzzing around recording video.

The Lily flying camera itself is still a work in progress. The prototypes I saw were 3-D printed, and carried low-res cameras; the production models will record HD quality video. But the system indeed does what its creators intended: It keeps the camera trained on the user in several different modes—following from behind, tracking from a set distance in front, circling, or hovering in midair as if held by an invisible selfie-stick (see video, above).

Indeed, as I set up a camera and tripod to photograph the company’s founders and a short demo, I could definitely see the appeal of this gadget—not for extreme sports, but for day to day journalism. Wouldn’t I love camera gear that I didn’t have to juggle, but would instead follow me like an obedient puppy!

Lily’s camera will be priced at US $499 for preorders. The founders indicated that at this price, they wouldn’t be making money, but are looking for these early adopters to act as beta testers. Standard retail pricing will be $999. See Lily’s promotional video, below.

Lily是一架无人机，还是一部照相机？

is百合无人机？还是相机？照片：Tekla Perry这顿，加利福尼亚，车库里有莉莉机器人；现在一五人启动。图为（左至右）是安托万balaresque，联合创始人和首席执行官；亨利布莱特劳，共同创始人和首席技术官；义何，计算机视觉工程师；罗柏Englin，工业设计师。（控制工程师罗兰与# 39；弗莱厄蒂不在
安托万balaresque亨利布莱特劳担心。他们已经开发了一个自主飞行视频摄像头，用于拍摄运动的土地和水，拍摄风景，同时徒步旅行和游览，并覆盖家庭事件（因此，每个人都在图片中）。他们认为他们&rsquo；做的很简单，父母可以把它扔在空中，忘了它，哄孩子把她的第一步。他们有足够的资金（100万美元投资）得到原型他们&rsquo；已经发展在过去的一年中投产。技术进展顺利； ；他们&rsquo；已经能够在计算机视觉中，控制聘请专家，与工业设计的，他们需要的，他们'重新上轨道；到了二月的2016艘。

那么&rsquo；的问题？问题是，他们的产品看起来像一架无人机在很多；他们不；不想是无人陪伴，他们想要的是一个相机公司。

说：&ldquo；人布莱特劳购买无人机，因为他们要飞的东西。那是；不这是什么，这是一个相机。你的照片它； ；你可以'；不控制它的飞行。&rdquo；

有无人机，balaresque说，携带相机。这些摄像机将图像发送至手机，用户可以在图像 ；而单独使用无人机&rsquo；飞行控制定位特定的球他们。百合是那样的东西，他坚持说。 ；你不；不能飞，你跟它拍照。

balaresque想到了这个项目，成为了莉莉机器人2013。在大学毕业后与家人度假，他翻阅照片他们&rsquo；D采取&mdash；并实现了他的母亲并&rsquo；T在任何人。大多数人可能会认为，&ldquo；噢，我应该拍一些照片。&rdquo；但balaresque，谁，尽管是商业专业，曾在一些大学的机器人项目，而不是思想，&ldquo；机器人可以解决这个问题。&rdquo；他回来到加利福尼亚的时候，他联系布莱特劳，他&rsquo；D曾在几个大学机器人项目，他们开始开发百合。

photo：Tekla perryprototypes百合&rsquo；的自主飞行相机线内的百合车库工作台。
百合可以成为经典硅谷创业的典范。它的创始人，刚毕业的大学生（在这种情况下，加州大学伯克利分校），在Hackathon。他们并肩工作，硬件组装和编码软件，与公司&rsquo；的几个员工在一个拥挤的停车场。车库坐在一个更拥挤的黑客宿舍后面，我告诉，我告诉，由一个长期的退休的风险资本家。房子&rsquo；的走廊上挤满了自行车和电动踏板车和其它轮式车辆；房子周围的草坪杂草丛生但宽敞&mdash；足够大的测试无人机。游泳池附近的一张桌子，四周的凳子，作为会议室；池本身是用于测试水上起飞和降落。

balaresque和布莱特劳开始工作后不久，他们的技术，夏天2013顿悟。最初，他们专注于开发软件，特别是计算机视觉软件，为了使相机&ldquo；看&rdquo；用户。他们的 ；在这一点上的想法是：他们&rsquo；D安装它在商用无人机。但是经过了大约六个月的发展，他们意识到现有的无人机需要处理飞行控制和计算机视觉系统所需要的处理能力。他们还希望有一个防水的无人机足够小，适合在一个正常的背包；只是没；不存在的时候。

系统他们想出了利用视频处理器处理 ；主要的，高分辨率的相机。 ；有三微控制器：一个控制电机稳定无人机； ；其他 ；两控制低分辨率摄像头跟踪用户， ；留意 ；地面以管理起飞和降落，并提供额外帮助稳定 ；小工具。完成零件的清单是一个加速度计、陀螺仪、气压计、磁强计和GPS装置。

单独的冰球，可以放在口袋或戴在手臂，告诉无人机，通过WiFi，谁跟踪。首先将用户&rsquo；与GPS接收机的位置（虽然这种情况一旦发生，视觉系统，具有更快的响应时间，做大部分的跟踪。冰球包含一些基本操作： ；切换飞行相机后，说， ；盘旋，或触发它起飞或降落。（更精确的调整，可以用手机的应用程序。）。冰球也包含一个加速度计来检测运动中的突然变化如 ；跳跃或跌倒。这些传感器可以用来在一个关键时刻切换到慢动作模式的相机。冰球还带有一个麦克风，无人机可以接音频它&rsquo；的周围嗡嗡记录 ； ；视频。

百合飞行相机本身仍然是一个进展中的工作。我看到的原型是三维打印，并携带低分辨率相机；生产模式将记录高清视频质量。但系统确实是其创作者的意图：它使训练在几个不同的模式-用户的相机；从后面，从前面的跟踪，设定距离盘旋，或悬浮在半空中，好像被一种无形的selfie坚持持有（见视频，上面）。

< P“的确，我设置了一个相机和三角架拍摄公司&rsquo；的创始人和一个短的演示，我可以看到这个小工具&mdash上诉；不是极限运动，但每天的新闻。不是；T我爱我没相机；没有变魔术，而是像一个听话的小狗跟着我！< / P >

百合&rsquo；的相机售价将在499美元的预购。创始人表示，在这个价格，他们就&rsquo；不赚钱，但在这些早期采用者作为测试。标准零售价格将为999美元。看到莉莉&rsquo；的宣传视频，下面。