AirDog Drone

AirDog is an interesting drone, the company that go by the same name make only the one drone. It has a very specific niche in the drone market, it is aimed at sports enthusiasts and professionals. It originally came to production in 2014 backed by a Kickstarter project that made over 1 million dollars, over 6 times the 20,000 dollars needed to get it made. The additional orders were all fulfilled and now the company sells its drones through Amazon.

Arguably AirDog is the first mainstream camera drone, but certainly the first autonomous one. It is controlled using the waterproof AirLeash which you attach to your wrist and just let AirDog follow you while you do your thing. When its battery is running low it simply returns to home and lands safely without you having to even pay attention to it. Its various sports modes tune it to the right shooting times and elevation during its flight. It also has options to save flight paths or set a shooting path from two points. AirDog has tons of shooting and framing features that can be adjusted using the free Android and iOS app (this cannot be used to control the drone).

What makes AirDog unique is that is not aimed at pilots and does not offer manual control. It is built to be simple and easy to use without thought or hassle. It is all based around being an auto-follow drone, your personal shooting companion.

AirDog has a mounted gimbal compatible with the GoPro Hero 3 and 4 off the shelf and an additional adapter is available to mount the Hero 5. The drone comes with LIDAR (for Light Detection and Ranging) which gives the drone ground collision avoidance whilst out on its own. AirDog are also very committed to maintaining and pushing new features to its tracking software.