This is a strange ‘how to’ but these things are so cool I couldn’t help writing something about them – the ardrone – a helicopter controlled by your iPhone with a camera on the front that transmits the image to your iPhone screen!
They are a ‘quadro-coptor’ – helicopter with 4 propellors, they have a camera in the front, they are controlled by your iphone, and you can see the image (640×480 resolution) from the iphone as you fly them. Basically this is one of those spy drone’s you see in the movies. And they are only $299. It’s incredible that something so powerful can be so cheap. They market it as a games device – I’m wondering if there would be all kinds of privacy issues if they marketed it as a spy drone!
It has some built in intelligence so that it will auto-pilot itself if you stop controlling it, and I love this bit – ‘if you receive a call while flying the quadricopter, the autopilot stabilizes it and lands after few seconds.’
It can fly at 18km/hr for 12min on one battery, and operates by wi-fi so I’m guessing about a 50m range in open air.
They are for sale from amazon.com
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