Well they said it would come, and it certainly seems to be. And faster than we imagined. Science fiction movies have been featuring flying cameras (usually as evil surveillance tools) for the longest time, but now an innovative company is about to release something for real.

The MeCam – not to be confused with the Mecam you understand – is an auto-hovering, auto-following micro quadcopter with an integrated camera, which the makers say will be able to deliver 1080p quality video (with rotor noise stripped out by on-board filtering) for a price of around $99.

It won’t need a remote control, because it can be controlled by voice commands (up, down, follow me, etc) and there are going to be indoor and outdoor versions to cope with all eventualities. The video will be beamed to your smartphone and the app will allow for recording of course.

Oh and did we mention it’s based on a Linux powered module, which is available for licensing by other manufacturers? Of course the big question is ‘how long is the flight time and charging’, because anything less than 10-15 minutes with a 15 minute charge is probably going to get annoying really fast.

Anyway, get ready for a slew of this type of product to appear on the shelves really soon now. Brave new world, indeed.