Snapchat parent Snap is said to have worked on drone designs before settling down for Spectacles. The said designs could one day come to fruition as fresh reports from BuzzFeed News (and Variety) suggest that the camera company (as it terms itself) acquired an L.A-based drone company named Ctrl Me Robotics late last year. The ambition to move past an ephemeral messaging app and trendy eyewear may have cost the company around $1 million.
Reports of the publicly-traded company having a passing interest in drones and other hardware junket floated the interwebs before its IPO, stirring interest among investors. But, the acquisition of a flailing drone company, with connections to Hollywood could suggest that something substantial is in the works. Snap has bought out Ctrl Me’s equipment and assets, along with the services of its chief executive Simon Nielsen. It is presently unknown what role he has appointed at within the company.
Ctrl Me Robotics was founded back in 2013 and has been described as a venture which helped clients capture aerial footage using third-party drones and those custom-built or retrofitted with cameras by them. The company marketed, in a 2014 video, that they would be developing custom drones capable of carrying bulky shooting cameras for local film studios.
The drone company was then looking to diversify beyond shooting random stuff to making custom projects for the movie industry. It also planned an expansion into the agricultural and oil industry. This was shown off in a video posted on their YouTube channel back in 2014. But, it is presently unknown whether the company was able to start building its own drones as the website and other contact sources for Ctrl Me are now offline. Here’s just an example of what they were trying with Snapchat+drones:
Earlier last year, Evan Spiegel-owned Snapchat shed the veil of being just another widely known ephemeral messaging app when the company rebranded to Snap Inc. The company went from being just a software company to a hardware one with the release of its $130 Spectacles, which had a camera embedded into the side of the same.
The Spectacles could directly relay ‘circular‘ footage to the Snapchat app and gained immense traction when it first launched. It has since been lost from the limelight as Snap suffers a counter attack of its cloned features from Facebook and its subsidiaries. They’re now planning to add new features as the copying process was completed just last week.
