In 2009 Burrard Lucas, an British wildlife photographer started the Beetle Cam project, aimed at getting close up photos and videos of african wildlife. How? A look at the equipment will get you the picture:

You can get one of these little Beetlecam robots at Camtraptions. Also check out the “adventures of Beetlecam” story on their blog for lots of details.

Now Burrard-Lucas took a step further, that probably becomes a reality because of the advances in multirotor technology, coupled to the price drops that go along the increasing commercial diffusion of personal drones, parts, software, video gear etc..

So here comes the Beetlecopter, an aerial version of the Beetlecam. Nothing really new, a multirotor equipped with a video camera.

The result though, surely also due to the photographer experience in wildlife environments, is short of breathtaking. Beautiful wildlife video, as it would have probably very difficult, or extremely expensive to film just a few years ago.

Here is a first video taken with the Beetle cam published on the Will Burrard-Lucas youtube account.

Beetle copter in the Serengeti

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSJGqtHZxCU

Stay tuned on the Personal Drones Blog for more quadcopter and multirotor news and updates!  Thanks to FPVGuy for pointing out this nice video!