A Chinese startup called Ryze Tech is selling an affordable drone
with technology from Intel and DJI. The $99 Tello is a tiny machine
with a camera that can capture 360-degree video and stream live footage
to a tablet, or to an unspecified selection of third-party VR headsets.
It’s aimed at a young audience, and Ryze promises features that will
make it safe and easy to use, including automatic takeoff and landing.
It says these features are possible because of an Intel vision
processing chip and flight stabilization from DJI — a company known for
larger and more expensive drones.
The Tello uses an Intel Movidius Myriad 2 VPU, which
handles object recognition in DJI drones, letting them do things like
respond to hand gestures. In the Tello, it’s supposed to help the drone
hover in one place more consistently, or land in an outstretched palm.
It’s supposed to help take some of the pressure off kids who are just
learning to fly a drone, letting them focus on capturing video or
programming flight patterns using the simple coding tool Scratch.
At 80 grams,
the Tello is definitely on the small side; DJI’s small-and-light Spark
drone weighs closer to 300 grams. It flies for 13 minutes at a time,
compared to the Spark’s 16 minutes, and takes 5-megapixel photos
compared to the Spark’s 12-megapixel ones. But it’s a lot cheaper than
the $499 Spark, too. The Tello isn’t supposed to launch until March, but
it’s debuting at CES this week and is available for pre-order now at B&H, so hopefully we’ll be able to put its capabilities to the test.