Hasta La Gadget!

It seems as if the robots are getting ready for an assault from both land and air these days. Just yesterday, we saw a creepy hexacopter that could also crawl, and now we have a drone that can both roll along on the ground and fly.

The Hybrid Terrestrial and Aerial Quadrotor (HyTAQ) robot was designed by Arash Kalantari and Matthew Spenko at The Robotics Laboratory at Chicago’s IIT. At first glance, it looks like an ordinary quadrotor, set into a cage. But that cage serves more than just a decorative purpose – it provides the means for the robot to roll on the ground.

The polycarbonate and carbon fiber cage is attached to an axle which can spin freely around the center of the quadrotor. By landing the quadrotor on the ground and and using the same actuators to drive it along the terrain. It’s a really cool and elegant design that also is able to protect its rotors from damage. Check out HyTAQ in action below:

Man, that thing can switch from ground ops to air ops so fast. The robot apocalypse can’t be far behind now – or at least the coolest robot toys you’ve ever played with.

Remember the sweet flying shark Air Swimmer? Well I guess the guys behind Angry Birds couldn’t resist getting in on the R/C blimp action and have teamed up with Air Swimmers to release an Angry Birds version.

While a flying shark might not make too much sense, a flying bird seems perfectly normal. Especially when that bird otherwise could only fly with the help of a catapult. The hovering birds measure in at over 3-feet-long, and can fly in any direction using the included remote control at a distance of up to 40 feet from the remote.

You can find the Angry Birds Air Swimmers over on the Air Swimmers website for $49.99(USD) each, though you can find the red bird on Amazon for a couple of bucks less. Bad Piggies balloons can be added for $9.99 for a set of three.

Let’s just hope they don’t release a version based on the black bird, unless you want it to explode on its maiden voyage. Oh, the humanity!

[via GeekAlerts]

There are plenty of R/C flying toys on the market these days, but I don’t know of many that can actually launch projectiles. The iStrike Shuttle is a flying drone which can not only buzz around, but can drop ping pong balls.

While I wish it could drop hundreds of balls, a la Mr. Moose, it can only drop one at a time. But that’s one more than my AR.Drone can do. Dream Cheeky’s iStrikeShuttle features a built-in gyroscopic technology to help it keep stable and balanced in flight, and can be controlled by your iOS device using Bluetooth connectivity.

The guys at Dream Cheeky are extremely close to having a production version ready, and just need to raise some funds to get the project over the finish line. If you’re one of the first 200 to head over to Kickstarter to support the iStrike Shuttle, you can grab one for $85(USD), a significant discount off the $129.99 retail price. Assuming they can hit their $30,000 fundraising goal by Thanksgiving, you should have one in hand in time for Christmas.

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