Snap Pixy Drone That Follows You Around Taking Photos Launched
Snap Inc. has a replacement for the cheap phone stands and awkward outstretched arms of modern self-filming: a yellow, square-shaped flying camera drone that costs $230, weighs about a quarter of a pound and hovers around you to film you automatically. The original inspiration for the pocket-sized drone, called Pixy, was: “What would it feel like if Tinker Bell were your personal photographer?” Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel said in an interview. “On one hand, you have these bulky, almost dangerous drones that you have to manually control with a remote control. And on the other hand, you have a phone that can’t fly.” After filming, Pixy can land in the owner’s hand autonomously. The images get auto-uploaded to the owner’s Snapchat app. It’s available for pre-order in the U.S. and France, and starts shipping in late May.
Snap, which calls itself a camera company, is known for its social media app Snapchat, popular with young people for sending disappearing annotated photo and video messages. Snap has been working on Pixy since at least 2017 and reportedly developed the device with the Beijing-based drone company Zero Zero Robotics. The drone is another product to emerge from Snap’s hardware labs and is meant to further its pursuit of the still embryonic market for augmented reality — the much-hyped technology that superimposes digital graphics on images of the real world.
Last spring, the company announced a fourth version of its camera-equipped glasses, called Spectacles, with augmented reality technology built in, but those remain available only for developers. Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are also all working on glasses featuring augmented reality as well as products devoted to virtual
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