Secretly—we like to muse anyway—all smart home companies aspire to create a product straight out of a dystopian sci-fi flick, but none of the have nailed the vibe as perfectly as Aevena with their Aire drone.
When it comes to technology in general (but especially smart home tech), people love to react like every new change or product is one of the four horsemen bringing about some sort of totalitarian dystopia where we’ll all wear gray jumpsuits, eat mush, and live under constant surveillance.
That’s all a bit silly of course, and as a veteran tech writer it’s easy to just chuckle and go back to playing with all the shiny new toys. But every once in awhile a new product comes along that makes you go “Oh man. They were right. This is it. The robot overlords actually are coming”. We won’t lie; that was our immediate reaction to coming across the Aevena Aire security drone.
The Aire ($749 MSRP) is a super sleek and compact drone with a cylindrical form factor with concealed rotors, a glowing ring, and a video eye front and center. The premise of the product is that, rather than relying on a network of static security cameras in your home (which may or may not be pointed at the thing you want to check on) the Aire can zip through the air by autonomously launching (and landing) to examine anything anywhere in your home at your beck and call.
One the one hand, that sounds pretty amazing. A personal security drone for your home! How cool would it be to check on your dog (assuming he wouldn’t jump up and eat it) or your dementia-stricken father (assuming he wouldn’t destroy it with an old timey boxing punch). If the thing was painted silver with a friendly Wall-E like face, we might just be sucked into the charm of it. But the current dark-body design makes it look less like a cheerful helper and more like a Dalek. I mean come on. Just look at this promotional photo, taken by the company itself.
Is it really checking on Grandpa to see if he’s OK, or is it about to start shrieking “Exterminate! Exterminate!” while carrying out its global domination mission?
The Aire isn’t available yet—it’s projected to ship in January of 2018—so, in fairness, we can’t tell you if it’s going to exterminate your elders. But if you’re curious to find out if it’s in the cards and you’re willing to gamble on gam-gam not making it to next Christmas, there’s still backer slots available in the Aire Kickstarter for you.
And, all jest (and fear of robot overlords) aside, we’ll wish the project well—any innovation in a developing market, even the kind that makes you think of Daleks, is good innovation.
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