What’s the size of a pizza box, sounds like an electric hair trimmer, and can leap tall buildings in a single bound? It’s the flying platform that Anthony Jacobs uses to shoot pictures for his aerial photography company, perspectiveAerials.

Jacobs, a former Getty Images editor and technician who lives in New York, has spent two years tinkering with a radio-controlled, gyroscope-balanced quadracopter. The still pictures and video he captures with it are surprisingly good for a little machine that weighs just a pound and a half.

What started as a hobby is now a business. Jacobs uses the craft to shoot images for customers who want aerial photographs without the expense of hiring a helicopter or airplane.

“My main market is real estate,” he says. “It’s a fraction of what you would pay a full-size helicopter to photograph your property.” 

Jacobs has also done some editorial photography with it. One of his aerial shots of the new Yankee Stadium ran on the front page of the USA Today earlier this year. It was that shot, Jacobs says, that got him fired from his job as an editorial events technician at Getty, which considered his side business to be a conflict of interest.

We recently asked Jacbos to demonstrate his aircraft. He met us on the West side of Manhattan by the High Line, a stretch of abandoned elevated railroad track that recently opened as a park.

Before our test run, we asked how people would react when they see this strange craft buzzing around. Jacobs said the usual reaction is curiosity. “People want to see this thing fly. They’ve never seen anything like it before,” he said.

Jacobs set the machine down on the sidewalk, calibrated the gyroscopes and turned on the camera. Within a few minutes the thing was airborne, buzzing straight up into the sky. Jacobs operated it with a radio control. He did three runs with it, and on the third ascent piloted it so high it was nearly out of sight.

Here's a video of the radio-controlled camera vehicle in flight:


(The video is also posted at PDNPulse)

The machine stunned the few people who spotted it. Some men installing a billboard noticed it first. “It’s a giant mosquito!” one of them shouted. Walkers strolling on the High Line realized the machine had a lens on it, so they stood in a line and waved at it, instinctively posing for a group photo.

Jacobs isn't the only person flying a machine like this. In fact, he asked us not to publish any pictures of his craft up close, in order to protect his ideas from competitors.



A German company called AirRobot promotes a similar device, as do companies Draganfly and Microdrones. Those companies promote their devices for surveillance usage by government agencies.

Jacobs figures he’s built his craft for about half what it would cost to buy one commercially. He’s put about $15,000 into his machines and has two working models. He says he’s never lost one.

The heart of Jacobs' device is a do-it-yourself kit called the Mikrokopter, which was invented in Germany. Unlike a typical RC helicopter, the craft uses an on-board computer and gyroscopes to fly smoothly.

“There’s thousands of calculations going on per second,” Jacobs explains. “When the craft rolls one degree to the right, it will put in more power to the right motors to push it the opposite direction.”

Jacobs has rigged the platform to work with a still or video cameras. For our test flight, he used a Panasonic HD camcorder, which he’d removed from its casing to save weight. The lens is mounted on a bracket that can pivot and swivel while the craft stays level. For stills, Jacobs rigs the craft with a Canon G10.

Some of Jacobs’ most impressive videos are shot in places where no other camera could go. One of his videos includes a sweeping climb up the side of the Flatiron Building, and a low-level flight over the Unisphere in Queens.

Recently, after reading a newspaper article about a series abandoned construction sites in Brooklyn, he used his device to peer over the fences and get shots of these unfinished buildings. He published a video on his Web site.

Jacobs' next step is to rig the device so it can stream high-definition video live from the craft. The NFL, he says, has asked about possibly using the machine at the Super Bowl.