Why do we have a feeling that drone of the near future won’t be the familiar quadcopter setup we know today? I mean, they will operate on the same basic principle necessary for a balance flight, but they won’t be presented as what we have accustomed to seeing. Fleye broke new ground with its spherical-shape flying contraption and more recently we saw one that folds like a book, which completely blew our mind. And now, a South Korea-based product design firm, nep design, seem to have combined both concept to create a spherical, foldable drone which it calls Sphere VR Drone.
Taking on an organic form, the Sphere VR Drone maintains a skeletal sphere form when not in flight and opens up like a blooming flower when it needs to take to the sky and it is of course loaded with imaging devices. Like really, really loaded. Detailed description wasn’t offered but from what we can see from the renders, it is outfitted with an upward facing camera, a downward facing camera, and an array of side-facing cameras. Though we are not sure if it is 360-degree capable as the rotor structures would be in the way and the top and bottom cameras don’t appear to be fish-eyes. Anyways, I may be wrong. Beyond the visuals, little is known about this beautiful craft.
Images: nep design.
