Hasta La Gadget!

The Oculus Rift: it’s not just for gaming. Erik Torkel Danielsson, one of the co-founders of Intuitive Aerial, decided to put his shiny new Rift through its paces this week by pairing it with his company’s Black Armor Drone. The hexacopter is designed for aerial photography, and the payload is pretty hefty — attached to the rig are two cameras simultaneously recording video and an onboard laptop. The video is encoded by the laptop and transmitted to the land-based computer via WiFi for display on the Rift. It all sounds pretty nifty, but it’s not quite a perfect system yet. There’s a latency of about 120 milliseconds, which is feasible for FPV flight, but not ideal. That being said, it’s still fun to see the Rift being put to new, innovative uses. To watch Intuitive Aerial’s first flight, check out the video after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Robots, HD

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Via: Hack A Day

Source: Intuitive Aerial

Drones like Parrot’s smart quadcopters are slowly becoming popular toys. While they’re not dirt cheap, they’re very stable, easy to pilot and some of them even have cameras or can be fitted with one. But what if you could turn anything into a drone? That’s exactly what Jasper Van Loenen set out to do when he made Drone It Yourself.

Yep, that’s a bicycle rim drone. The kit consists of four propellers driven by ESC motors, four C-clamps, a Bluetooth module, a receiver and an OpenPilot flight controller. All of these parts fit neatly in a custom briefcase, but the resulting drone isn’t always pretty. Actually you know what? These makeshift drones are beyond pretty. Watch the rim, a keyboard and more take flight:

Needs more R. Kelly. Tinkerers can head to Jasper’s website to download the 3D files for the printed parts.

[via Doobybrain]

Robot drones could eventually make their way to St. Louis.

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It Original content from Ubergizmo.

While it may not come as much of a surprise to some people, the FBI has confirmed and admitted that they perform surveillance with drones on US soil. FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that they use drones for surveillance in the US, but “in a very, very minimal way, and

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Fast food is designed to be served quickly, but it could always be faster. Aimed at expediting service, the world’s first iPad-controlled flying food serving tray is here to help. It can be found at YO! Sushi in Soho, London, where it’s serving meals to customers.

The iTray is a serving tray that can fly at 25mph for a distance of 50 meters to deliver your food.

On-board cameras provide live video feed to waiters and kitchen staff to make sure all is well. The iTray is lightweight, and made of carbon fiber. So they should be safe if they get involved in food delivery crashes. Just order your food and it will be flown to your table.

This awesomely ridiculous food delivery method will be introduced in 64 UK branches by 2014 if the pilot phase is successful. And how can it not be? Unless iTrays start dropping food on customers or smacking them in the head, of course.

[via Damn Geeky]