DJI has unveiled the Spark drone, one of the smallest and cheapest automated flying machines the company has ever made.
Spark’s most impressive feature is its ability to completely dispatch and pilot the drone through hand signals and that makes it DJI’s most newbie-friendly drone to date.
Although past models were able to take pictures when a particular hand motion was made, despite everything they should have been flown with a different remote control.
To set up the Spark, you’ll need to charge the battery, join it to the chassis and connect your telephone to the Spark’s Wi-Fi. Tap the catch on the back of the Spark twice and it’ll be ready for departure.
When it’s airborne, you can move your arm towards the drone with your hand to start it tracking your movements. Raising and bringing down your arm changes the flying machine’s height, while creating a square shape with your hands will command it to take a photo and you can thrust your hand forwards to “push” it away by ten feet if you so wish.
If you want the drone to return to you, just wave your arms over your head and it’ll come flying back to you.
If you want to dump the hand gestures, you can opt to use the smartphone with its companion app, allowing you to fly the drone up to 100 metres from your device.
One factor you should consider before spending such a sum on the DJI Spark is that its battery only lasts 16 minutes, which doesn’t give you much time to take lots of aerial photos.
“Controlling a camera drone with hand movements alone is a major step towards making aerial technology an intuitive part of everyone’s daily life, from work and adventure to moments with friends and family,” said Paul Pan, Senior Product Manager at DJI.
“Spark’s revolutionary new interface lets you effortlessly extend your point of view to the air, making it easier than ever to capture and share the world from new perspectives.”
