This quadcopter can follow and record you autonomously

You don’t need a friend to carry a camera to catch all those gnarly extreme-sports moves anymore. You just need this drone and a GoPro. A Kickstarter campaign to fund the first batch of drones from startup Squadrone System is raking in money fast. The goal is $50,000. It debuted today, and people threw more than that at the campaign within two hours of its launch. Sure, unmanned aerial vehicles can be fascinating, helpful, and sometimes even world-changing, but they don’t often have the distinction of being able to fly around and follow a fast-moving person without someone minding its every move. But Squadrone’s smartphone app changes all that. It lets people set rules about how far away and at what angle the drone will stay as you ski, skate, ride, run, or otherwise move. That distinction could make waves for the filming industry, and perhaps it could lead to footage that couldn’t be shot before. The drone can fly at about 45 mph. It weighs less than 3 pounds, not including the GoPro camera that you can mount on it. One downside: It can only operate for 15 minutes at a time. But with money coming to the Palo Alto, Calif., startup at this rate, that little hiccup could soon be history. The startup expects to deliver its first drones in May 2015.