New York Founder Institute Graduate Easy Aerial’s new drone, the Easy Drone XL Pro, was featured on the Science Channel’s “All-American Makers” recently, and passed their acid test with flying colors. Touted as able to carry three pounds in flight by maker Ivan Stamatovski, it actually carried 7.3 pounds without issue across the length of a baseball field.
Stamatovski, who holds a Bachelor's degree in industrial design, as well as a Masters in Digital Marketing, had already raised over $80,000 in two Kickstarter campaigns for Easy Drone and Easy Drone XL Pro by the time the show aired in February 2016.
The Easy Drone was originally marketed as "the first modular plug-and-fly aerial solution," and the Easy Drone XL Pro added more weight capability. It also, according to Stamatovski, widened the industry applications:
- Precision agriculture - where long flight times and autonomy allow for automatic deployment and large area coverage. Not to mention we'd be working on a very important issue - food production optimization.
- First responders - a bird's eye view is crucial for quick and precise assessment of the situation. Easy Drone can be a universal tool for any first responder team that is easy to transport and quick to deploy.
- Professional video - with longest flight times in the industry carrying a professional camera and built in wireless video link, camera shutter and gimbal control, Easy Drone beats competitors in every aspect including the price point.
In the very tough testing round of Season 2, Episode 10 of "All-American Makers", the Easy Drone XL Pro not only carried more than double the amount of weight that Stamatovski gave as the maximum, but also displayed the modular capabilities, with assembly literally requiring only a few moments out of the box.
The technical experts on the show, Brook Drumm and Brian Roe, are no strangers to the inventing process, and have both had their own success in the technical creative world. Drumm, founder of Printrbot, raised $800,000 in less than a month on Kickstarter to get his product off the ground, and Roe has more than 25 years of experience in the technical design field, with movie technology credits galore, and a robot of his creation that was voted one of the top ten prototypes of 2013 by Popular Science Magazine.
Much like "Shark Tank," there is an element of the fairy godmother ending possible for successful inventors who can convince entrepreneur Marc Portney to fund their dream. Portney's own money is on the line if he invests, and while Stamatovski didn't, in the end, get the investment he was looking for, it was a market-based decision, rather than a denial of the obvious worth of the drone he invented.
The key features of the Easy Drone XL Pro include easy deployment, advertised as 60 seconds from in pieces to in the air. Lighter cameras mean a much longer flight time than the vast majority of quadcopter drones on the market, and it can handle loads up to that of a large pizza easily, as well. The modular construction also means repairs are super easy, and an optional backpack can be purchased to make transportation a snap.
There are new federal drone rules being proposed that may lift the business restrictions on the use of drones in the under-55 pound category, imposing much more reasonable standards than the current petition for Section 333 Exemption which is necessary to legally operate a non-hobby drone. This will open up the superlight quadcopter market for entrepreneurs like Stamatovski--and perhaps, had the new rules been in place, might have even garnered a more favorable result from Portney.
