Google Awarded Patent for Conference Call Quadcopter

Ever get frustrated by Skype calls or Google Hangouts? Maybe you’re fed up of being a pixelated blur on a laptop screen and want to make more impact in your meetings. Well, Google has an idea for you. The company has just been awarded a patent for a flying conference call system. We’re not sure why, but it’s guaranteed to spice up your meetings. So long as whoever you’re talking to can hear above the hum of the drone, anyway.

So why bother giving Skype wings? We suppose it’s possible to imagine a future where long distance video calls are even more realistic than they are today. It wasn’t long ago that the thought of being able to video call someone on the other side of the world was a ridiculous idea, so who are we to rule out projecting 3D versions of ourselves from drones, or streaming our faces onto a roaming screen?

Want to read more on Google’s drone industry patents? Check out our piece on the company’s Emergency Drone Call System.

An obvious benefit of flying conference call drones is that they would allow for much more dynamic presentations and meetings. Through a drone you would remotely be able to move around the room and see things from different angles. But maybe we’re getting too far ahead of ourselves here. This is just a patent after all. And it’s more likely that Google is taking preemptive steps rather than actively pursuing the idea.

In the patent, Google suggests that the idea would be more manageable than today’s laptop calls: “Implementation of a mobile telepresence system on a relatively compact and operationally efficient airborne platform such as a quadcopter may provide significant improvements in, for example, speed, maneuverability, energy consumption and the like, facilitating access to spaces which may be otherwise difficult to access by a larger and less maneuverable platform.”

Long shot or master plan? Take a look through the patent images below and make up your own mind.