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This odd new drone is designed to fold into an egg shape for easy transport

Powervision Robotics is known for its innovations in industrial robotics, and now the company is poised to enter the consumer marketplace. Headquartered in Beijing, Powervision recently announced the new PowerEgg drone, an egg-shaped unmanned aerial vehicle that is easy to fly and highly portable due to its unique design.

Powervision chose an oval shape for its PowerEgg drone both for aesthetic and functional reasons. “We think the oval shape is not only clean and pure but also has structural and functional benefits. This simple yet vital design means that this is more than a flying robot but a work of art,” said Powervision CEO Wally Zheng.

The egg shape sets the drone apart from other four-axis drones that adopt a typical x-shaped design. The drone features an oval chassis with four larger propellers that collapse into the body of the device. This mechanism allows the drone to fold up into a compact shell, making it highly portable. When folded, the drone is small enough to fit in a standard backpack.

Eye-catching when it flies, the PowerEgg also has an impressive set of specs, including a 4K HD camera with real-time video transmission and a 3-axis gimbal camera mount that provides a 360-degree panoramic view. It also has stability sensors for indoor flying and an intuitive remote control that PowerVision says makes the PowerEgg drone easy to fly even for beginners. “We want flying a drone to be child’s play, something even a five-year-old can do,” said CEO Zheng. With most drones taking up to 10 hours to learn how to use, PowerVision claims its software system and remote control design cuts the average user’s training time in half.

Using its experience in industrial drone technology and robotics, PowerVision has been working for the last 18 months on the PowerEgg drone. The company expects to begin shipping its new drone sometime in the second quarter of 2016. Pricing and availability details are not yet available.

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Kelly Hodgkins
Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…
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