You never know what you’ll see when you’re visiting Las Vegas for the yearly insanity of the Consumer Electronics Show. Perhaps you’ll spot someone running naked down the Strip or a stretch limo cutting off another stretch limo in traffic. Or maybe you’ll see a drone flying over a volcano—you know, just another typical day in Vegas.
The drone-minded folks at South Korea–based Byrobot decided to check that last item off of their to-do list this week, taking to the Nevada skies with their Drone Fighter and capturing the fiery volcano show in front of the Mirage Hotel and Casino. The nightly eruptions are always a popular attraction, but they’re even more amazing when viewed from the sky.
It’s hard to tell exactly how high the drone is while it’s recording this footage of flames and explosions, but it seems to be almost as high as the volcano is tall. Thanks to its unique perspective, we get a glimpse of the fire-spewing hardware that makes the monument function. The drone pilot is careful not to actually fly over the flames, for obvious reasons, but the view is still pretty stunning.
The stunt was—as you might imagine—an attempt to draw attention to Byrobot’s mini quadcopter, which the company is showing off at CES this year. You can’t tell it from the clip, but the drone that’s filming the volcano is actually extremely small. It could fit in the palm of your hand.
Byrobot’s drone is a far cry from the massive Parrot AR.Drone units we’re used to seeing in the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, but if it can shoot HD video like this, maybe size doesn’t matter after all.
Photo via Serge Melki/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
