[6] On December 26, 2017, Nixie Labs, the drone's maker, stopped doing business and surrendered its corporate registration in the State of California.

[1][2][16] At that time, an important engineering challenge was to identify flexible, light, and durable materials to achieve the look of concept renderings.

[2][15] In November 2014, an updated prototype added image recognition capabilities to identify the user,[7] and the primary goals were improving propellers, motors, and object navigation.

After tinkering with a quadcopter that he received as a gift, Kohstall built a drone model of eyeglasses with propellers, as well as a prototype that could dive underwater and then reemerge from under the surface.

[11] In their second interview with Wired,[10] the developers indicated that their primary goals for improving the drone were optimizing propellers, motors, and object navigation, as well as miniaturisation of Nixie.