Follow me drones
A follow me drone is a drone that holds a position relative to a moving subject and keeps the camera pointed at them without anyone touching the sticks, using either the satellite position reported by a phone or beacon the subject is carrying, or a software lock on the subject's shape in the camera picture. Both methods work, neither works everywhere, and the difference between them decides whether the feature is useful to you. The mode is not autonomy: the person who launched the aircraft is still flying it, is still responsible for it, and still has to be able to see it.
Where this class sits
Typical take-off weights for this class, on the same scale used on every class page, so the twelve can be read against one another. The only figure here with legal force is the 250 gram line.
What a follow me drone actually is
A follow me drone is an ordinary camera multirotor running a tracking mode, rather than a separate kind of machine. There is no follow me airframe, no follow me motor and no follow me sensor: the hardware is the same aircraft that takes a static aerial photograph, and the feature is a piece of software in the flight controller plus, on the better implementations, a set of obstacle sensors looking in the direction of travel. Camera machines above the toy price band commonly offer some version of it, usually under a name the manufacturer has invented, and the names describe marketing tiers rather than different capabilities.
The distinction that matters is how the aircraft is told where the subject is. That is a genuine engineering split, it produces two classes of behaviour and two sets of failures, and it is described in the next section. The wider question of what the word drone covers is handled on What a drone actually is.
What separates a follow me drone from the rest
What separates a follow me drone from the rest is how the aircraft is told where the subject is, and there are exactly two methods in consumer use. The first is beacon following: the controller, a phone or a small tracker in the subject's pocket reports its own satellite position, the aircraft compares that with its own, and it flies to hold a chosen offset in distance and height. The second is vision tracking: the subject is selected by drawing a box around them on the screen, and the flight controller keeps that shape centred in the frame by steering the aircraft and the gimbal.
| Attribute | Beacon following | Vision tracking |
|---|---|---|
| What the aircraft tracks | A reported position | A shape in the picture |
| Works at distance | Yes, subject can be a dot | No, subject must fill enough frame |
| Works in poor light | Yes | Degrades, then fails |
| Fails when | The subject's position fix is poor or lagging | The subject passes behind anything, or matches the background |
| Framing quality | Loose, the subject drifts in frame | Tight, the subject stays centred |
| Typical use | Open ground, water, snow, long runs | Close work, short takes, controlled settings |
A third component decides whether either method is safe to use: forward and downward obstacle sensors. Without them the aircraft will follow the subject straight into whatever the subject walked round, because a tracking mode is a heading instruction and nothing more. With them, the aircraft brakes or steps sideways, and on the better systems it will pick a route round a tree while keeping the camera on the subject. Those sensors are optical, so they fail in low light, against featureless surfaces such as still water and fresh snow, and in rain.
What a follow me drone costs
Tracking appears in three price bands and only the top two are worth buying for it. Under one hundred pounds the feature exists as a phone based follow that holds a rough heading with no obstacle sensing at all, and the honest description is that it is a demonstration rather than a tool. From roughly four hundred to nine hundred pounds the feature becomes real: a stabilised gimbal so the picture is watchable, vision tracking that holds a runner, forward obstacle sensing, and a return to home that works. Above that band the money buys sensing in more directions, better route planning around obstacles, and a camera that holds up when the light drops, which is exactly when tracking is most likely to be used and most likely to fail.
Paying more stops improving the following itself fairly quickly. What the extra actually buys is recovery: the ability of the aircraft to keep the subject when the shot goes wrong, and the ability to avoid the branch that the cheaper machine flies into. That is worth paying for, but it is a different thing from the feature getting better.
What to check before buying a follow me drone
- Identify which of the two tracking methods the machine uses, and whether it offers both.
- Count the directions the obstacle sensors face, and treat forward sensing as the minimum.
- Check the maximum speed of the aircraft against the speed of the thing you intend to follow.
- Check whether tracking still runs when the subject is behind the aircraft, or only ahead of it.
- Check what happens when the lock is lost: whether the aircraft stops and hovers or continues on the last heading.
- Check whether the tracking mode is available at all when the aircraft is below the height the sensors need.
- Check the gimbal, since a tracked subject in a shaky frame is unusable footage.
- Check the weight against 250 g, because the lightest machines rarely carry the sensors this feature depends on.
- Check whether a second person can hold the controller while you are the subject.
What flying a follow me drone is like
The first ten minutes of following are unnerving, because the aircraft does something no other mode does: it comes towards you. It lifts, swings round behind you, settles at its offset, and then moves whenever you move, and the natural instinct is to watch it rather than to walk normally. Once the novelty passes, the real experience of the class is divided attention. You are the subject and the pilot at once. You are meant to be running, riding or walking convincingly, and you are also the only person who can see the aircraft, take control and stop it.
What it punishes is terrain. On an open beach or a moor it is almost boring, in the good sense: the aircraft holds its offset and the footage is steady. Under trees, in a lane, along a hedge or anywhere with a fence line, the tracking either loses you or the aircraft finds the obstacle you knew about and it did not. It also punishes changes of shape and light. Turning a corner into shade, putting on a jacket, or passing a group of people dressed similarly will all break a vision lock, and the aircraft will sit there holding position while the subject walks out of frame.
Caution
A tracking aircraft flies towards the subject at head height by design, and its propellers are turning the whole time. Never let it approach a subject who is not expecting it, never track a child, and keep the aircraft's assigned offset far enough back that a sudden sensor stop still leaves a gap. Obstacle sensors do not see thin branches, wire fences, washing lines or rigging, and those are the objects a following aircraft hits.
The UK rules that apply to follow me drones
Follow me drones carry the camera, gimbal and obstacle sensors that tracking needs, so they are almost always over 250 g, which puts them in the part of the scheme that asks for operator registration and a flyer identifier, and the 400 foot ceiling, about 120 metres, applies to them in a following mode exactly as it does in any other. The two requirements that press hardest on this class are the separation to be kept from other people, who did not choose to be near the aircraft, and the requirement to keep the aircraft in sight, which is difficult to satisfy honestly while riding a bicycle. The Civil Aviation Authority publishes the requirements and changes them from time to time, so they should be read there before the first flight.
Follow me drones against the alternatives
Two sibling classes beat this one in the situations most buyers are actually imagining. If the footage matters more than the automation, a plain camera machine flown by a second person produces a better shot every time, because a human pilot anticipates the corner and the software does not, and the choice of that machine belongs on Camera drones. If the shot you have in your head is the close, fast chase along a trail with the aircraft weaving through gaps, no tracking mode will produce it and none is close: that is a piloted shot, it is flown from the aircraft's point of view, and FPV and racing drones is the class that does it. A beginner machine is also the better first purchase for somebody who has never flown, because a tracking mode is not a substitute for knowing what the aircraft will do when it stops tracking.
Following a mountain bike, a motorcycle, and where tracking gives up
Mountain biking is the use this feature is most often bought for and one of the worst it is asked to do. A trail worth riding is narrow, has a canopy over it, and puts obstacles at exactly the height the aircraft wants to fly. Vision tracking loses the rider in dappled light under trees; beacon following keeps the position but flies the straight line between two points, and that line runs through branches. Where it does work on a bike is open moorland, forest road, fire track and beach, where the aircraft has clear air and the rider stays in the open for long enough to be worth filming.
Following a motorcycle is a different problem and mostly an unrealistic one. Consumer camera aircraft cruise at speeds a road going motorcycle passes easily, so the aircraft falls behind and the shot becomes a receding dot; the machines that are quick enough have short endurance and no tracking. On top of that, following a vehicle on a public road puts the aircraft over a road with people in cars on it and takes it out of sight almost immediately, which is where the separation requirements and the sight requirement both apply. The realistic version is a single pass on a private track or an unused road, flown by a second person, with the rider going considerably slower than they would like.
Searches for a camera drone for sale nearby are worth one plain answer: nothing is sold here, and the tracking feature is the same software whether the machine is bought in a shop or online, so the thing to compare between listings is the sensor count and the tracking method, not the seller.
Is a follow me drone the right buy for you?
Yes, if you spend your time on open ground and want a moving shot of yourself that you could not otherwise get alone. The class suits somebody who walks, runs, paddles, skis or rides in open country, who accepts that the aircraft will lose them occasionally, and who treats the mode as one shot in a session rather than the reason for the purchase. It is the wrong buy for somebody who wants to film themselves riding a technical woodland trail, for anybody who expects to fly it while giving it no attention, and for anybody buying it as a way to avoid learning to fly, because the moment tracking stops is the moment flying skill is required.