The HoverAir Aqua, the world's first fully waterproof self-flying drone, officially went on sale last week. Shortly after the launch, I got the opportunity to pick the brains of MQ Wang, CEO of Zero Zero Robotics, the company responsible for the Aqua, as well as previous drones like the V-Copter Falcon Mini, HoverAir X1 and HoverAir X1 Pro. With a PhD from the Bay Area's renowned Stanford University and a distinguished background in AI research, Wang co-founded the Hangzhou-based Zero Zero Robotics in 2014.

You can read TechRadar's in-depth review of the HoverAir Aqua for my considered thoughts on how it performs, but one thing is beyond doubt: this is a true world-first, and a gamechanger in a category where innovation has generally been slow and steady rather than transformative. As Wang explained to me, water and drones have not been comfortable bedfellows until now.

Sea soaring

"Conventional drones use GPS to stabilize over water, but crashes can happen when they fly too close to the surface. With our HoverAir X1, which had no GPS sensors, users could not fly over the water at all and that was an obvious pain point. We added OmniTerrain on HoverAir X1 Pro and ProMax and with our self-tracking abilities, many users started experimenting with SUP, foiling and kayaking. But it was still a risky endeavor, with retrieval in particular being challenging on the water."

He tells me that Zero Zero Robotics has been developing the Aqua itself for over two years, not including the work previously completed in conceptualization and early R&D. Because it wasn't enough just to make a drone that was waterproof: "It's about the whole user experience, including take-off and landing, retrieval, control over the water, truly going phone-free, and follow stability, as the target is very often out of view during water sports."

In order to solve the problem of following a subject over water without a constant view, Zero Zero Robotics created the Lighthouse, a trackable wearable device that works alongside vision-based tracking to ensure the drone knows where the wearer is at all times.

"Lighthouse Tracking is critical for moments when the user isn't visible, including directly after take-off if your Aqua is facing away from you, or if you're hidden by spray. However, we'll continue to invest heavily in visual tracking, and our 'secret sauce' is in the interaction of the two. This is why we've added multiple water sport modes including Kayak, SUP, and Foil Mode. In these modes, we'll tailor basic settings like distance, height and vertical composition, but we also update our visual tracking algorithm — for example, for a seated user in Kayak mode, where only half their body is visible."

He tells me the drone uses RTK, aka real-Time kinematic positioning, to improve its tracking performance, plus a miniaturized millimeter-wave radar system to determine its vertical distance from the water's surface. The latter has never been used on a consumer-level drone before.

Competing with DJI

It's perhaps becoming clearer as to why the HoverAir Aqua is quite an expensive drone compared with DJI's similarly sized drones: there's a lot of advanced technology at work inside that won't be found elsewhere. I asked Wang if finding spaces where DJI (far and away the global market leader in consumer drones) won't go is part of Zero Zero's long-term strategy.

"Our product strategy is not defined by avoiding or embracing competition with DJI, but about reimagining what is possible in ways that provide value and delight for our customers. I'm an engineering guy at heart, and product remains one of my key areas of focus. What energizes the team and me is finding these "aha" moments — the combination of cutting-edge technology and a fresh way of looking at a problem that unlocks something nobody else has done before."

He gives me the example of the Hover Camera Passport, a drone launched by Zero Zero in 2016, and the first consumer drone designed to take off from the palm of the user's hand. "Today, this feels like a standard feature, but the combination of that experience and our fully enclosed propeller design allowed for entirely new use cases and new users to enjoy aerial photography. It's the same with Aqua: our team was at the Sanctuary Cove Boat Show in Australia recently and probably a third of the visitors to our booth said they'd lost a drone to the water before. This is clearly a pain point that people have, and nobody had dared to try to solve it... until us!"

The HoverAir Aqua was initially announced almost a year ago, when Zero Zero Robotics launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Indiegogo platform. Wang tells me one of the advantages of this approach is the wider community can provide pre-release feedback and suggestions well ahead of the actual retail launch. For the Aqua, this resulted in the development of the Foil flight mode, as well as testing of the drone in white water situations where, Wang tells me, it works very well.

As the community gets more familiar with the Aqua, we can expect more new features to be added via firmware updates. But one set of users are unfortunately locked out of the process, at least for now, because the drone has not yet launched in the USA.

This seems to be a late decision, as right up until launch it was our understanding that the Aqua would be launching globally. A day before the launch date, I was told by Zero Zero Robotics' PR rep that the US launch date was being postponed due to "current US administrative and regulatory complexities." Anyone familiar with the situation DJI finds itself in will likely know what that means, given that Zero Zero Robotics is, like DJI, a company headquartered in China.

As my final question, I ask Wang if he can give me an update on when the HoverAir Aqua might launch in the States. "Due to confidentiality reasons, including the current competitive landscape," he replies, "I can only share that we are looking to comply with the current FCC regulations as quickly as we can. We're excited for US customers to be able to enjoy Aqua as soon as possible."

For now, at least, US-based water sports enthusiasts will be left enviously eyeing the aquatic adventures being filmed by the Aqua elsewhere on the planet. That's a shame, because it's a drone that really stands out as delivering something a bit different from the standard flying camera template.

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Sam has been writing about tech and digital culture for over 20 years, starting off in video games journalism before branching out into the wonderful worlds of consumer electronics, streaming entertainment and photography. Over the years he has written for Wired, Stuff, GQ, T3, Trusted Reviews and PC Zone, and now lives on the Kent coast in the UK – the ideal place for a camera reviewer to ply their trade.