Skip to main content

Watch a human-carrying drone lift a snowboarder off a mountain

Watch a human-carrying drone lift a snowboarder off a mountain

/

Brought to you by Samsung™

Share this story

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

YouTuber (and CNN employee) Casey Neistat may have retired from daily vlogging, but he hasn’t quit making videos. His latest holiday video goes bigger than ever, with a giant, custom-made drone that’s capable of lifting and flying around an adult human being (in this case, Neistat, on a snowboard).

Neistat says the drone was customized for the video over the course of a year after being unable to find any commercially available drones for the project. The drone itself is an absolutely massive 16-rotor machine — which makes sense, given the weight it needs to be able to carry.

And while we’ve seen one-man drones capable of carrying people before, Neistat’s finished product offers a level of polish and practical use that earlier demos have lacked.

Much of the video itself is extremely reminiscent of Neistat’s earlier videos, where he snowboarded while being pulled by a car, with the car replaced by a drone. But intermixed with the drone-assisted snowboarding are some legitimately impressive aerial shots of Neistat being lifted approximately 25 feet in the air.

Heavily sponsored by Samsung

As cool as the actual human-carrying drone is, Neistat is quick to remind viewers at the end that the video was heavily sponsored by Samsung, which casts a sour, branded-content shadow over things. And while this sort of promotional video is nothing new for Neistat, it reduces the genuinely cool idea to what is essentially a Samsung advertisement. Samsung’s Gear 360 camera also makes several prominent appearances in the video, in addition to being used for some of the filming. A separate, 360-degree version shot entirely with the Samsung camera is expected to be uploaded later today.