As discovered by CanonNews while this is hardly new technology that will shock the industry, it's intriguing that Canon spent what seems to be a considerable amount of time drafting a patent application on a drone (or as they also say, any moving vehicle) consumer camera gimbal.
Canon has applied for patents in this space before, as we have mentioned here not so long ago and they continue to apply for patents in this area. While Canon has developed industrial drones before, these patents are certainly discussing a more consumer variant than we have seen Canon do in the past.
Of course, Canon patents many different ideas and concepts that never come to fruition. It is interesting to see what Canon is actively researching as patent applications such as this require a fair amount of engineering to be performed prior to the patent being created.
The concept is to create a very small apparatus that pans and tilts a camera integrated into the assembly – but the assembly should also work with external attached cameras as well, even though Canon doesn't actually show the mechanical assembly of such a device.
According to the patent application literature;
In particular, in order to finely control the rotation in the tilt direction, it is necessary to greatly reduce the rotation of the motor, so that a plurality of pulleys and timing belts are required, and the tilt drive mechanism becomes large. As a result, the image pickup device consisting of the camera and the rotation drive mechanism also becomes large, and the degree of freedom of mounting on the handlebar of the drone or bicycle may be reduced, and in particular, the weight of the image pickup device may exceed the maximum load capacity in the drone. ..
An object of the present invention is to provide an electronic device, an image pickup device, and a mobile body that can be miniaturized.
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I wouldn't hold my breath, there is no way Canon will produce affordable, value for money drones packed with features like DJI. They most likely will employ their stupid market segmentation strategy, better known as the 'Canon cripple hammer' to lock out basic features in the cheaper models, and sell their more useful mid to pro level gear at over-inflated prices. If they are brazen enough to put a fake overheat timer into the R5, what makes you think they wouldn't intentionally use undersized batteries or fake battery capacity cutouts in a drone to limit flight time? Or lock out video modes in firmware intentionally?
Finally, patents are just possible ideas for potential future products, it's quite possible that Canon drones may never be produced, or they may dip their toes in the water and the products will be a complete flop.
I don't *need* a drone today. If so, then I'd bite the bullet and get DJI. I can wait a couple years to see if anyone else gets in the market with a viable enough product.