Watching @_johnmills fly a drone #BGHDigital pic.twitter.com/2OAmdGAkul

— Purple Kerry (@kezmond) April 1, 2014

Charlie the Drone made his first appearance at the Manchester’s Business Growth Hub’s inaugural The Future of Digital Conference this week.

Appearing with Media Innovation Studio researcher John Mills, who gave a short talk on the emerging field of drone journalism, related ethical and legislative concerns and UCLan’s aerosee UAV search and rescue project, Charlie also conducted a short flight to demonstrate how affordable drone technology is entering the public domain.

The lightening talk focussed on the aerosee search and rescue research project, and hightlight how the future of digital could continued to be fuelled by the power of the crowd, and collaborative digital approaches.

#BGHDigital @_johnmills Say hello to Charlie the #drone. pic.twitter.com/XKe9NLLyVP

— Top Events (@Top_Events_) April 1, 2014

Check out the footage from Charlie’s brief flight at Future of Digital 2014.

Charlie the Drone at Business Growth Hub’s future of digital conference 2014 from Media Innovation Studio on Vimeo.

And the slides from the talk, are just here: