We all know that nagging feeling when you're 15 minutes out the door and you're positive you left the oven on.
What if instead of checking Google News for "apartment fires" in your neighborhood every 10 minutes, you could just pick up your smartphone and send your home drone to check?
Eighty Nine Robotics, a Northwestern startup, just launched the drone for the job. It's called Rook, a small, lightweight, distantly controlled indoor drone. It connects to home WiFi and is flown using a smartphone, which allows the drone to be controlled from anywhere. The drone could be used to monitor pets, as a home security system, or to offer a virtual tour of any space.
Currently Eighty Nine Robotics is aiming to raise $20,000 on Indiegogo to fund production of the device, which they have been developing for the past 18 months.
Rook: The World's 1st Fly-From-Anywhere Home Drone from Eighty Nine Robotics on Vimeo.
Rook has a mounted camera that shows a live-stream during flight. To control the flight, users simply tap and swipe the direction they want to go on their smartphone screen. When they're finished monitoring, users fly the drone back to a charging pad which can charge the battery in an hour (currently Rook has a five minute flight capacity). There are also built in flight stabilization features, soft blade guards, and speed limits to help drone novices fly the device. In the future, the team hopes to add features such as voice-activated controls, timed flights, and integration with smart home systems.
On Indiegogo early adopters can pre-order Rook for $99, but when the device rolls out commercially (likely in early 2017) it will retail for about $200.
Hardware, and particularly drones, are notoriously difficult products to get off the ground, said founder Jackie Wu, so they're taking several precautions to ensure they deliver the product on time and keep costs low.
"Several other drone startups tried to reinvent the wheel, and subsequently failed to deliver because of supply chain and technical feasibility problems," he said. "In contrast, we’re building Rook using existing supply chains and off-the-shelf components. This approach will allow us to make good on our promise to backers to deliver an exciting, useful product on time."
Wu studied robotics at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering, and currently is running the 10-person startup out of Northwestern's on-campus innovation hub, the Garage. Originally, they anticipated launching Rook as a pet monitoring drone, but realized that there were more opportunities if they let users decide how they would use an indoor drone. Now Wu said they've talked to customers interested in using Rook as an educational device to teach kids about robotics, and as a tool for real estate agents to take home buyers on a virtual property tour.
Eighty Nine Robotics was also accepted to Alchemist Accelerator in Silicon Valley, and the Department of Homeland Security-backed EMERGE Accelerator in Dallas, but chose to continue to grow their startup in the midwest.
"We believe in the ecosystem at Northwestern and in Chicago," he said. "I think it's much stronger here."
