GoPro working on six-camera mount for VR, and a drone

With the current gen GoPro HERO4 including 4K30 shooting, time lapse video and high frame rate shooting, many of us were left wondering what’s next for the action camera juggernaut. As it turns out, virtual reality and drones.

Today, GoPro CEO Nick Woodman joined Recode’s Kara Swisher at the Code Conference to talk about where the company was headed and where they planned to branch away from their current product lineup.

While many of GoPro’s announcements in the past have seemed iterative – tweaking a frame rate here and adding low light sensitivity there – Woodman spoke of a couple of innovations that were a cool departure from the expected.

The first contraption GoPro is working on is a six-camera spherical array designed for capturing 360-degree high resolution images and video for virtual reality. The images and video can be stitched together using Kolor, a virtual reality software company GoPro acquired in April. The result? A unified 6K image.

Those images and videos can be viewed on released and upcoming VR headsets, or using the Kolor app or YouTube 360 on a smartphone or computer.

Here’s an example video GoPro shot for the Code Conference (source: re/code.net):

GoPro did not announce pricing for the Six-Camera Spherical Array today, but word on the street is that it will be available in the second half of the year. Techcrunch estimates something in the $1,500 – 2,000 range, though what that would include at that price is not clear.

Next on the list of GoPro toys is a quadcopter. It has been suspected for some time that GoPro was entering the drone market, but confirmation of an upcoming UAV is good news for those of us into the aerial game. Expect the GoPro drone to launch in the first half of next year, and be priced for the consumer market.

“It’s incredible to see our world from new perspectives. It’s a real ‘Oh my God’ moment,” said Woodman. “We did that with our GoPro cameras, and we see a similar opportunity in the quadcopter market. It’s something that’s in our DNA, and we are excited about it across the company.”

According to re/code, GoPro’s initiative to create their own UAV hardware doesn’t change their plans to continue working with other drone manufacturers to provide cameras and software solutions for aerial video and photography.

“We recognize that consumers want choice,” said Woodman. “Our primary focus is enabling great content, and however they want to do that, we’re excited to be part of that.”