Forget Selfie Stick, Here Comes ROAM-e Drone!

ROAM-e selfie Drone

Australian tech firm IoT Group has launched a new “ROAM-e” drone priced A$349 (US $267) that will be hovering over you as are on go and takes your picture in 360 degree format to be streamed live on the Internet and social media.

Replacing the selfie sticks or stretching your hand far to get a better selfie picture, users can now use the small drone built with facial recognition technology and tethered with your smartphone, it can be your constant companion in air for 20 minutes at a stretch and easily rechargeable.

Ian Duffell, executive director of the IoT Group, says it is “a selfie stick on steroids” since the selfie stick’s problem is it’s confined by the length of the stick. Once tethered to your smart phone, you’ll never need additional tethering devices specific to ROAM-e, he said.

“The thought was, let’s get the thing taking the picture flying with you,” he said. The two rotor ‘ROAM-e’ can be programmed using facial recognition technology to follow the user at a distance of up to 25 metres. It can take 360-degree panorama pictures of you and even stream a live video for up to 20 minutes.

The ROAM-e has a 5-megapixel CMOS sensor camera and runs on Quadcore ARM Cortex A7 processor and its rotors can be folded.

“We wanted it to be small enough to fit into a bag or pocket. We modelled it on not being bigger than a 600-millilitre water bottle,” Duffell noted launching the device on Thursday. It has the ability of the drone to drop a pin on a map application, if instructions are given to it to travel to that point and return, he said.