Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Flying the Breeze drone just got, well, breezy with a new controller and goggles

By Hillary K. Grigonis Published June 18, 2018

Yuneec’s portable selfie drone, the Breeze, now offers a first-person look at the flight and physical flight controls. On Tuesday, Yuneec International announced the Breeze First-Person View Controller and goggles, an optional upgrade from the drone’s original app-based flight controls.

Breeze FPV Headset (PRNewsFoto/Yuneec International) — Yuneec International

A smartphone slides into the goggles, offering a view from the Breeze’s onboard 4K camera. The video-game-like controller pairs with that smartphone via Bluetooth, allowing users to control the drone with joysticks while watching the flight through the goggles.

Recommended Videos

Yuneec, a California-based company, says that the new goggles help create an immersive and uninterrupted experience flying the Breeze. Along with the first-person view mode, users can also place the smartphone in the cradle on top of the controller.

The Breeze ships without a controller — users instead control the drone with an app. While Digital Trends reviewer Drew Prindle said the Yunnec app is one of the best he’s tried, the touchscreen format isn’t as precise as physical controls. Now, Breeze pilots who want that enhanced physical control can get a more fine-tuned flight with the controller and goggle combo.

“At Yuneec, our engineers are always pushing the envelope to develop creative solutions that deliver the best experience for the consumer,” Yu Tian, chief executive officer of Yuneec International, said in a press release. “The Breeze FPV controller enhances the flying experience for Yuneec pilots by literally putting them in the driver’s seat of their drone. While operating the Breeze, they’ll have more confidence, greater perspective, and more creative possibilities at their disposal.”

The goggles can accommodate both iOS and Android phones measuring between 4.7 and 6 inches, offering a 110-degree field of view from the drone’s camera with pupil distance adjustment available. The drone sends 720p video to the goggles via Bluetooth.

The controller works within 100 meters, or 328 feet, of the drone.

The controller and goggle add-on lists for $70 and will be available directly from Yuneec as well as from selected Breeze retailers.

Hillary K. Grigonis

Former Contributor

Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…

Topics

Emerging Tech

Anthropic’s sensitive internal data was exposed, and AI helped make it happen

Even the company behind Claude isn't immune to AI-powered security threats, as researchers discovered some worrying vulnerabilities.

Claude Anthropic Featured

AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.

The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.

Emerging Tech

A new startup wants to fix the military’s working-dog shortage with cloning and gene editing

Promising pitch, plenty of unanswered questions about the dogs.

a new startup wants to fix the militarys working dog shortage with cloning and gene editing warhound featured image

Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.

Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).

Emerging Tech

AI can describe a picture, but it still struggles to understand blind users

A University of Maryland study finds that Be My AI often buries useful answers in lengthy descriptions, leaving blind users to work harder to get the information they need.

Blind Man using walking stick

AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.

The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.