Drones, drones, drones – they do seem to be just about anywhere and everywhere. Of course, on the battlefield, they do their bit in reconnaissance as well as hit-and-run missions, but how about the ordinary Joe like you and I? We could own our very own drones, too, but they are certainly not as well equipped as a Predator. Having said that, AirDroids intends to make drones accessible to just about anyone and everyone, thanks to the successful funding of a Kickstarter project known as the Pocket Drone.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Waddington in the UK maintains two Ground Control Stations for managing unmanned aircraft systems flying halfway around the world in Afghanistan.
Remote-controlled toys have gotten a whole lot more complex these days from the early generation of such model planes. In fact, it has moved at such a pace where the FAA had already requested for a bunch of model aircraft enthusiasts, The Academy for Model Aeronautics (AMA), to come alongside the FAA to work on ironing out new guidelines when it comes to flying around such vehicles in safety. The models of today are larger than ever before, and can even be made to function nearly autonomously. Not to mention the fact that they’re easier to purchase, making it a potential hazard to folks on the ground as well as for commercial air travel.
Drones have been a hot topic in both the tech and the political world, particularly following Amazon’s stated goal of delivering products by drone one day. Building upon this and … Continue reading
French Bluetooth company turned drone-maker Parrot has some new hardware for CES 2014, including two brand new smartphone-controlled bots. One is the rolling, jumping Sumo and the other is the MiniDrone, a super small version of its popular AR Drone that flies, rolls and hugs the ceiling and the walls.
The MiniDrone is remarkably small, coming in at about a tenth of the size of the full version, which makes it incredibly portable. You could actually slip one in your pocket without much issue if you really wanted to. To get that size advantage, it ditches the camera, but it adds to removable, large wheels that allow it to roll around the ground – or go acrobatic and run along the wall or the ceiling, too.
The Sumo is a two-wheeled ground-only unit that does have a camera, just like the big AR Drone, and has a foot built in that allows it to stop pretty much instantly, and to leap up in the air up to 80cm. It’s a bit more rugged in keeping with its rough-and-tumble lifestyle, too, and reminds me a bit of the Sphero 2B that company just unveiled.
There’s no firm ship date for either the MiniDrone or the Sumo, but they’re coming “soon” according to CEO Henri Seydoux, for a price that’s yet to be finalized. I asked Seydoux how these two designs came to be, and whether they were the result of user requests and feedback, and he said that in fact Parrot dreamt them up because “we like to have fun.”
The advent of affordable quadcopters has made aerial photography accessible for almost anybody. Getting really good results still often takes a bit more than just attaching a GoPro to a quadcopter. A few months ago, I looked at the DJI Phantom and that was already a lot of fun to fly, though the images you could get from an unmodified Phantom can be quite shaky.
Now, DJI has launched the DJI Phantom 2 Vision, which comes with a built-in camera you remotely control through your phone. As far as out-of-the-box quadcopters go, the $1,200 Vision sets a new standard for anybody who wants to get into aerial photography and is a heck of a lot of fun to fly.
One thing to remember here is that you are looking at a prosumer device – and not just because of the price. This is not the kind of remote-controlled helicopter you can pick up at any discount store today. Just like its predecessor, the Vision has a built-in GPS unit that allows it to fly back home if the connection to the remote controller is ever interrupted. In the near future, DJI will release an app that will turn the Vision into an autonomous drone by allowing you to input GPS coordinates and have it fly a circuit without your input.
What makes the new Phantom stand out, though, is the fact that you get a direct video downlink from the camera that shows up on your iPhone or Android device. To do this, DJI built a mobile app and added a Wi-Fi extender to the remote (which you have to charge separately). As the remote has a range of up to 1,500 feet, the Wi-Fi connection between the phone and Vision would likely break up after just a few hundred feet. With the USB-charged Wi-Fi extender, you should be able to keep the video going up to almost 1,000 feet (though all of this always depends on your local conditions, too).
The phone app comes in handy for more than just seeing the video link. It also includes a heads-up display with all the pertinent information about your flight, including speed, distance, height and battery life. You can also use it to see a radar-like screen that tells you where exactly your quadcopter is in relation to your own position.
The phone controls all the settings for the built-in camera. The wide-angle camera itself is comparable to a GoPro Here 3 Silver Edition and can, among numerous other settings, take 1080p video at 30 frames per second (fps) and 720p video at 60 fps. Unlike the GoPro, it can also record 1080i at 60 fps. Thanks to the built-in vibration-damping platform underneath the vision, the video you get from this unit is significantly better than from an unmodified Phantom 1.
When it comes to these kinds of videos, higher frame rates are often desirable, as the slowed-down video makes the recording feel quite a bit smoother. All of the images are beamed to your phone, but also stored on a microSD card.
Using your phone, you can start and stop video recordings, but you can also take still images. The 14 megapixel camera doesn’t exactly rival a DSLR, but does a nice job of keeping up with different lighting conditions and in a pinch, you can always set your exposure settings manually from the app. You can also take images in RAW format, but so far, DJI hasn’t made any tools available to actually read these images in Photoshop or other photo-editing suites (chances are it will at CES this week).
I’ve got a feeling these kinds of images will be the next trend in wedding photography (let’s just hope the photographers are better fliers than this guy).
Here is an example of what raw video from the Vision looks like:
The gimbal underneath the Vision only moves vertically, so it doesn’t fully eliminate vibrations and only compensates for the quadcopter’s forward and backward motions. When you’re flying sideways, your image will also be slightly tilted to the side. Overall, though, this system does away with virtually all of the dreaded “jello effect” that often marred videos from the original Phantom when paired with a GoPro.
Unlike the previous Phantom, which had a battery life of about 10 minutes, the Vision comes with a far more powerful battery. I didn’t quite feel like crashing my review unit by running out of juice (though it should automatically land itself if it does indeed run out), but in my tests, the unit easily stayed in the air for a good 25 minutes, which is on par with DJI’s promises. In return, though, the battery, which includes the on/off switch for the quadcopter, is proprietary and an additional unit will set you back about $150.
How hard is it to fly the Vision? I’m not an experienced RC flyer, but just like the earlier Phantom, the Vision is pretty easy to get in the air and land after you’ve watched the introductory videos. Once it’s flying, the live video and radar scope make it straightforward to stay in control, though inexperienced flyers should definitely go slow at first. This isn’t a toy, after all, and it has four fast-spinning rotors that could easily hurt somebody. Because of this, you probably want to stay away from people at first (and trees, power lines and everything else, really).
I never quite crashed the Vision, but I did make a couple of ungraceful landings that didn’t seem to faze the Vision. If it’s anything like the original Phantom, which I did manage to crash into concrete and trees when I tested it, it should stand up to quite a bit of punishment.
It’s also worth remembering that the FAA would prefer it if you didn’t fly any remote-controlled planes within the proximity of an airport (three miles is the standard for regular remote-controlled aircraft) and to keep them under 400 feet.
If you have $1,200 dollars burning a hole in your pocket, the Vision is probably among the coolest toys you can buy right now (and hey, it’s even $200 cheaper than Google Glass). It won’t let you start your own Amazon Prime drone delivery service, but it’ll give your videos and photographs a whole new perspective.
Six US teams have been given permission to build and test drones, with the FAA green-lighting several test sites across the country as it figures out how safe, useful, and … Continue reading
From the DIY Laser Guy: "I present my most terrifying laser creation as of yet… the remote controlled death ray drone bot! This beast packs a potent 2W blue laser that fries anything in it’s path. It can walk around and shoot it’s death ray at the touch of a button."
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While flying drones are often associated with military missions or espionage, the ability to send small payloads through the air under remote control opens up possibilities for all kinds of other interesting applications. In fact, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could change everything from the way we provide emergency services in disasters to how your pizza is delivered. Here are just a few technologies in the works that could send tiny aircraft into our skies in the not-too-distant future.
Perhaps the most well publicized recent story about flying drones is that of Amazon’s Prime Air service. This outlandish sounding package delivery service would use flying drones to deliver small packages at ranges up to 10 miles from Amazon’s warehouses. The drones would autonomously navigate to their destination using GPS coordinates, and could deliver payloads up to five pounds, which Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says would cover 86% of the individual items they sell. Such a service could substantially reduce delivery and fuel costs, since the flying drones operate on electricity, and fewer drivers would be required for delivery.
In addition, the service could enable deliveries in as little as 30 minutes to homes within range of Amazon’s widespread shipping facilities. There are certainly questions about the viability of such a service, ranging from theft to air and consumer safety, but it sure seems like a cool idea. And Amazon is one of the few companies with the resources and logistical expertise to pull something like this off.
While remote-controlled drones are frequently used in search and rescue missions, they generally are used to assess conditions and safety or to look for survivors. But there’s at least one project in which the drones could more directly save lives. In development by Iran’s RTS Lab, the Pars Aerial Rescue Robot could be used not only to relay visual and heat signature feedback to rescue personnel, it could actually carry and drop rescue supplies.
The most compelling example of this so far is the ability to do marine search and rescue operations, flying over victims in the water and dropping life preservers to them. Multiple rechargeable drones would be stored aboard rescue ships to help search much larger areas of open water than possible with a single helicopter, and deliver supplies to multiple victims in the water.
Another unexpected use of UAVs is in the field of archeology. Inexpensive flying drones have been used to survey large archaeological dig sites and generate topographic maps in a fraction of the time required for traditional surveys. Even more importantly, the drones can be used as to monitor and protect historically significant sites from damage or destruction. In Peru, archaeologists have used drones to map numerous sites, though they have struggled with the nation’s higher altitudes, and are currently experimenting with blimp-based drones instead of quadcopters.
These are just a few of the more unconventional uses for UAV technology. In addition to the examples here, flying drones are regularly being used to help shoot movies and TV shows, to detect and monitor forest fires, and to even help locate deposits of minerals for use in the production of fuel. They’re also being used for less serious uses, like delivering sushi and burritos.
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Rolls-Royce may not have a fleet of autonomous luxury cars on the road yet, but the ship-building engineering group that bears the same name is predicting self-piloting drone ships within … Continue reading
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Drones, drones, drones – they do seem to be just about anywhere and everywhere. Of course, on the battlefield, they do their bit in reconnaissance as well as hit-and-run missions, but how about the ordinary Joe like you and I? We could own our very own drones, too, but they are certainly not as well equipped as a Predator. Having said that, AirDroids intends to make drones accessible to just about anyone and everyone, thanks to the successful funding of a Kickstarter project known as the Pocket Drone.
Remote-controlled toys have gotten a whole lot more complex these days from the early generation of such model planes. In fact, it has moved at such a pace where the FAA had already requested for a bunch of model aircraft enthusiasts, The Academy for Model Aeronautics (AMA), to come alongside the FAA to work on ironing out new guidelines when it comes to flying around such vehicles in safety. The models of today are larger than ever before, and can even be made to function nearly autonomously. Not to mention the fact that they’re easier to purchase, making it a potential hazard to folks on the ground as well as for commercial air travel.
The Sumo is a two-wheeled ground-only unit that does have a camera, just like the big AR Drone, and has a foot built in that allows it to stop pretty much instantly, and to leap up in the air up to 80cm. It’s a bit more rugged in keeping with its rough-and-tumble lifestyle, too, and reminds me a bit of the Sphero 2B that company just unveiled.
