Best Follow Me Drones

If you are interested in buying a new drone then the chances are you will have heard of follow me drones. The lower end UAV’s don’t tend to have this technology but when you start spending upwards of £250 most drones will have either GPS or tracking through recognition technology.

What is a follow me drone?

Quite simply, a follow me drone is one that follows you or a subject of your choosing autonomously. Not only does this make for a much easier piloting, photographing and videoing experience, but it also makes for more natural shots – especially if you want or need to be in them.

One of the biggest issues with manually controlled drones is that whoever is controlling them is usually looking at a controller – this hardly makes for fantastic videography – but with a follow me quadcopter you can pretty much set and forget (for a good few minutes at least).
How Do Follow Me Drones Work?

Follow me drones have two main systems that allow tracking. The first system and the one that was developed first historically is one that uses GPS (Global Positioning System) and the other is one that uses more sophisticated recognition systems.
GPS Drones That Follow You

GPS is hardly new technology these days and most of us carry around devices that have GPS as standard. Using either a GPS enabled smartphone or a controller with a GPS transmitter, the drone then tracks the transmitter and focuses on the subject.

There are advantages and disadvantages to drones that follow you using GPS. The main disadvantage is that the cameras on GPS follow me drones sometimes have a harder time focusing on the actual subject. Contrastingly, they do pretty well at keeping the active tether between drone and transmitter so you rarely lose the subject from the shot.
Active Track/Recognition Drones That Follow You

The accepted standard among premium drone manufacturers these days is active recognition technology for tracking and follow-me purposes. Using either one or a number of the following; camera, sensors and tracking software, these drones are able to track moving subjects with a high degree of accuracy and are very difficult to beat when it comes to image quality and ability to keep the subject in focus in the centre of the shot.

DJI, Parrot and Walkera have led the way when it comes to active tracking using recognition but there are now a number of companies popping up that are offering fully autonomous drones with unbelievable tracking systems on board – the first to launch being the Skydio R1.
Using Follow Me Drones

Using a drone that can follow you might sound like it would be tricky to use but generally speaking most drones are actually very easy to use when using follow-me modes. The software that is built in to either the drone, the receiver or a combination of the two is pretty advanced in most cases and although all drone manufacturers have you use it in a slightly different way, many use a dedicated app (that you install on your smartphone) to set up the tracking and shot types that you want.

DJI and Parrot do a pretty good job of providing you with a range of shots that you can use and you will be able to change the flightpath of the drone, height, angle and distance of the drone in relation to the subject. Some drones that use recognition tracking technology can even track multiple subjects and keep them all in frame whilst automatically avoiding any kind of obstacles in its path.

This combination of shot types and state of the art drone and camera hardware means that you can get some stunning photography and videography using the follow me mode on a drone.

Some of the shot types that you may get on a UAV such as this are:

Orbit – Continually orbit an object
Active Track – Up to 16 selectable subjects – perfect for running, cycling and other fast moving action shots
Circle – Circles around the subject for a full 360 degrees circular shot
Profile – Allows you to keep the subject in frame from a particular angle

Collision Avoidance

It is worthwhile noting the safety implications of using drones, but more specifically when using more autonomous modes such as follow me – this is even more important with drones that use GPS as the main method of tracking. Nearly all of the newly released drones that have a follow me mode will have some sort of collision avoidance – especially if they use sensors or cameras for recognition tracking.

The extent of the collision avoidance is something that you might want to take a look at in more detail and you should certainly be sure to know the limitations of your own UAV before you take it up to flight. DJI are considered amongst the best for collision avoidance but even the Mavic Air has a lack of side sensors which can become problematic when using the profile mode for follow me shots.

If you want 100% safety in terms of collision avoidance then we would recommend waiting out for the completely autonomous drones such as the Skydio R1 – although at the time of writing this is only available in the United States and is quite costly – we will add it to this list if/when it launches in the UK.
Best Follow Me Drones

If you are still reading you should hopefully now feel quite well versed in drones with follow-me technology. Let’s take a look at the best of the bunch – we will be focusing the review around image quality, stability, ease of use, ability to track subjects accurately, types of shots and overall value.