Menlo Park startup develops camera drone for perfect selfies

MENLO PARK, Calif. (KGO) -- Selfies are all the rage, but as the name implies you have to hold the camera yourself. A local startup has now taken taking selfies to new heights.

The first thing you probably shouldn't do with a camera is throw it, unless that camera happens to have four propellers and a computer guidance system.

"Lily is a flying camera that actually follows you around to record your adventures," said Henry Bradlow, chief technology officer for Lily.

A marketing video of the device shows the little hamburger shaped camera chasing a snowboarder down a mountain, shooting slow motion video the whole way.

The unique thing about Lily is you don't have to fly it. All you do is literally throw it in the air. In fact, Lily doesn't even have a joystick controller because it's not meant for the typical drone enthusiast. It's just meant for people who want cool pictures of themselves.

"People want to be in the frame, in the picture," said Antoine Balaresque. "People want to see themselves with their loved ones and that's where the selfie trend kind of came from."

Lily's designers wanted to eliminate anything fragile or finicky, so the propellers are the only moving parts on the whole thing. There's also nothing sticking off to get bent or broken, not even skids on the bottom for taking off because Lily's only meant to take off from your hand.

Lily's makers call it throw-and-shoot and they've filed a patent for it. Just like a cat, Lily flips right side up in mid-air and like a dog it follows you around. The tracking device will tell Lily how you're moving. The side buttons trigger fancy camera moves, and the one in the middle is to land back in your hand.

It took a lot of tinkering to get just right. Most of it was done in a garage in Menlo Park. Of course, it's across the street from an open field.

"We're out testing every single day. We've made 50 iterations of our prototype at this point," Bradlow said.

The final version is almost ready to manufacture. It'll be waterproof, fly for 20 minutes on a charge and they're taking pre-orders for $500.

"And it has to be simple so my grandmother can use it and my younger sister can use it," Balaresque said.