USA Today Drone

by FliteTest | October 21, 2015 | (9) Posted in Projects

As many people know, October 21, 2015 holds a very special place in the "Back to the Future" fan calendar.

Back to the Future - a popular time travel movie trilogy in the late 1980s and 1990s made a lot of bold predictions about 2015 - the existence of hover boards, self tying shoe laces and flying cars. However one of the lesser remembered predictions was the USA TODAY news drone that was featured in Back to the Future 2. Drones will probably have an increasing role in news organizations simply because of the unique perspective they can capture rather inexpensively. When compared to a full scale news helicopter, a drone with a small camera seems pretty useful!

 

Flite Test partnered with USA TODAY to get a "news drone" prototype ready for a huge back to the future 30th anniversary celebration put on by We're Going Back (weregoingback.com).

The USA TODAY drone will be able to capture a fun perspective on the festivities that will include a broad range of activities from actual hover boarding with the original back to the future stunt team and event testing out some beautifully restored Deloreans!

The most important features for USA TODAY were that the drone is pleasing to look at and incorporates their branding tastefully but also that it has the ability to easily swap out many different kinds of camera platforms to meet their needs for various news reporting demerits. 

These include 360 degree cameras, large DSLRs and 4K capable cameras

 

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COMMENTS

Paulshort on October 21, 2015
Nice. I would love to see some footage from the 360 cam.
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Flyingninja on October 21, 2015
This is great! I'm so glad that FT is really pretty well known now!
By the way, did any of you notice the huge spider by the drone's right leg? It was at 1:46 in the video :)
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Yogenh on October 21, 2015
That was a tinny little spider you almost can't even see it,

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lguystillfly on October 21, 2015
"We heard you liked isolation, so we isolated your isolators". haha
And woah.. that is a pretty big spider! Good eye, flyingninja.
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PropSpinner on October 21, 2015
Wow! Talk about keeping it fresh! Thanks for the new and interesting content. I hope you can get some more customers like that.
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midohioboarder on October 21, 2015
you guys see the big wolf spider by Peter's foot @ 1:46 in the video?!! Yikes.
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N-Duck on October 21, 2015
It's just Peter's next project...A mini octo-copter call the Spyder!

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MOcchionero on October 22, 2015
Wow congratulations Peter and flight test. You guys are the experts. Hopefully projects like this and your expertise can reduce the negativity shown by the news media about drones. I actually hate that term, drones, and prefer to call them what they are, and that is a multi rotor. Congratulations again.
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HilldaFlyer on October 24, 2015
Funtastic design and kudos for getting recognized. I was expecting to see some video from the on-board cameras zooming across the grass... Maybe the next episode?
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USA Today Drone