Open ROV Trident Drone
Because aerial footage is so passé
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Amateur aerial shots are as common as cat videos now, thanks to the proliferation of new inexpensive, beginner-friendly drones. Underwater footage, however, is still mostly the realm of the pros. But maybe not for long. A company called Open ROV recently developed the Trident, a remote-controlled, easy-to-use underwater drone with a built-in HD camera that's capable of venturing down more than 300 feet.
Pilots tether the Trident to a floating buoy, which connects via WiFi to a laptop or tablet that controls the machine and relays live-streaming video. The drone can be programmed to either run on auto-pilot, mapping a selected area and following preset routes, or in manual mode. The device zooms along at more than six feet per second and is just over a foot long, and less than a foot wide, so it's small enough to be carried on the plane.
$950, kickstarter.com
