Sometimes you see a new idea or product and just fall in love with it immediately. This is the case for the Aevena Aire flying robot. As soon as I saw it, I thought of the robot from Lost in Space that bumbled goofily through the alien landscape warning of danger. That’s pretty much right on the nose, since the Aire is a decidedly friendly and extremely useful bot.
There is definitely a 1960s super-helpful-TV-robot-sidekick kind of a vibe to this device. It’s a bit funny-looking, but that’s part of its charm. And once you get past the novelty of the thing, you realize there is a lot of crazy-good technology at work.
The Aire on its base awaiting your command.
The Aevena Aire is billed as an all-in-one home monitoring and security solution. At rest, it sits on its docking station waiting and watching. It has 360-degree flight sensors and microphones that can detect motion and sound coming from any direction. If it senses anything unusual happening in your home–intruders, smoke alarms, someone falling and not being able to get up—it will send you an alert. And that’s not all: It can navigate to the spot of the problem and show you what’s going on via streaming video.
Control the Aire from your phone.
You can control the Aire from anywhere in the world with your phone. On your command it can take flight, snapping photos and shooting video with its 4K video camera to give you a 360-degree view of any part your home. The body of the device is covered with sensors that allow it to safely navigate through your living space without crashing into anything, or anyone. Aire also works with Amazon Alexa, so you can give it voice commands.
The designers say they’ve gone out of their way to make it quiet enough to be to used comfortably in the home. And the blades of the fan that provide propulsion, and all other moving parts, are safely contained inside the machine’s soft but durable hull. So there’s no danger to your children, household objects, or pets. I’m not sure it could win a fight with your Doberman, though.
Safe and quiet …
Uses? Well, imagine you’re vacationing, and you start wondering if you’ve left the stove on. Is the dog OK? How’s grandpa? Have we accidentally left one of our children behind? (It could happen. There’s a movie about that, I think.) Put your mind at ease. The little bot can lift off, wing its way into your kitchen, and show you that everything is OK—or transmit horrifying images of smoke billowing through your home. But at least you would know what was happening and could do something about it.
“I’m OK! I’m OK! Stop worrying and enjoy your vacation!”
Currently, Aevena has a Kickstarter page up and running for the new flying home assistant. Have a look. You’ll find complete specs, plenty of cool videos that show the Aevena Aire doing its thing and being gazed upon lovingly by its host family. You can even pre-order one. But your hovering little buddy won’t be available until January 2019.
See it in action below, right now!
