Review: Sink or Swim? BIKI Underwater drone
One of small, elegant and vital pillars that underpin the appeal of consumer-grade drones is that they can go where you can’t. However, one environ that’s remained outside the grasp of drones until very recently has been water.
There are two details to note here. The first is that waterproofing tech is actually quite difficult to pull off. Even IP-ratings like those found on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 have their limits. The second thing to remember is that water naturally tends to soak up, absorb and reflect radio signals like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth really, really easily. To summarize things: making a drone that underwater is way more difficult than it sounds.
Still, despite these obstacles, the concept of an aquatic drone is appealing enough that more than a few tech companies are willing to give it a go. Robosea’s BIKI is pitching itself as the world’s first bionic wireless underwater drone. As alluded to above, there are actually a few similar products around but BIKI is still distinguished by its unique fish-like design and 4K-quality stabilized camera.
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign that saw Robosea rake in over $220,000 in pre-order pledges, BIKI is finally here. However, while the finished product here isn’t quite a sinker - it doesn’t really live up to the high watermark expected of it either.
Specs
BIKI is a wireless aquatic drone equipped with a camera boasting a wide 150-degree lens and built-in stabilization system. All told, the drone is capable of shooting photos and video in up to 4K quality. Both BIKI’s movement and photographic capabilities are controlled using either the bundled-in remote or a smartphone running the Robosea companion app. Both methods connect to the drone via Wi-Fi.
Robosea say that BIKI is good for between 90 and 120 minutes of use per charge and can swim at depths of up to 196 feet. It’s also packing 32GB of internal storage and two 114 lumen lights on the unit’s “face”.
Design
As you’d expect from something being bandied about as an aquatic drone, BIKI looks like a big, white robot fish. Admittedly, this a pretty simple look that Robosea have gone with but it works well here. There’s big dorsal fin on top, camera array and lights embedded on the front and a sweeping rubberized tailfin at the back.
Size-wise, it’s relatively comparable to something like a full-frame camera or the recent DJI Spark drone - though it’s a little heavier than the latter. It’s got a denseness which, thankfully, doesn’t impact on the buoyancy of the thing.
The remote control that comes bundled with BIKI fits nicely into the palm of your hand. The button layout is pretty intuitive and while the buttons themselves are a little lacking in feel-factor, they still feel moderately responsive.
Likewise, the Robosea app is also reasonably well designed. Weighing in at about 20MB in size, it’s not a huge download but it does let you jump right into controlling and taking pictures with BIKI with minimal fuss. The fact that you can easily pull the photos off the drones’ internal storage to your phone was something I really liked here. In practice as well as theory, this inclusion makes for a big plus as it saves you the need to invest in an extra SD card.
Pros
Easy to setup
On-board storage is very useful
4K Camera
Cons
Feels unresponsive to control
Iffy Connectivity
Bottom Line
As it stands, aquatic drones like BIKI are cool but they remain a category with plenty of problems to solve before they can be easily recommended to the mass market.
