It costs less than a quarter of the $1,400 bill of materials estimated for the Japanese Defense Ministry's flying sphere. The battery gives it a running time of only 12 minutes. And its CPU is only a 468MHz ARM9. But the AR.Drone 2.0, which Parrot introduced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, has impressive hovering, takeoff, and landing abilities similar to those of the Japanese sphere. (You can access videos here and here.)
The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 has a streamlined hull for outside use. For inside use,
a full hull shield protects it from impact.
(Source: Parrot)
The AR.Drone 2.0 is the second version of the popular flying robot, which its maker calls a flying, augmented reality video game. It's got on-board video cameras and WiFi for streaming video to the handheld control device, which can be an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad. Though it was designed for Apple platforms, it will be available on other hardware "in the next few months," the company says. It can also be controlled with a Linux PC and a joystick using the AR.Drone Navigation software, which is available for free and was designed for application developers.
With some imagination and better electronics, the robot could be both cheap and powerful enough to form a design platform for machine vision and military applications. It's also really cool to look at, and I bet it's a lot of fun to play with. If I were an engineer, I'd want to figure out how to make it more powerful without weighing too much more or compromising its moves.
The Parrot quadricopter is made of carbon fiber and high-resistance PA66 plastic, a polyamide, or nylon. Its embedded CPU runs Linux, and memory is kept at a low 128Mbytes of 200MHz DDR. Running speed is 16.4 feet per second, or 11.2mph. With its protective hull for indoor use, it measures 20.7 inches x 20.3 inches. Outdoors, without the hull, the Parrot measures 17.7 inches x 11.4 inches. With or without the hull, it weighs less than a pound.
You're absolutely right Ann: I bet a lot of engineers are going to be drooling over this robot and the opportunity to figure out how it works and to extend it. Is this designed to be a toy or is just to showcase technology that has broader potential--perhaps for some of the applications you mentioned?
This is cool, Ann. I would imagine we'll see a proliferation of this -- going downmarket for inexpensive toys for kids and going upmarket for the adult hobbyists who go out to parks on Saturday mornings with their radio-operated planes.
Beth, the Parrot appears to be designed as a (very sophisticated) toy, although I doubt the gamers would call it that. Most of the videos show teens using it, but as Rob points out, many adults play with these, too. The elements of the technology itself have been showcased with way better hardware elsewhere, including the Japanese flying sphere, or various military drone prototypes. OTOH, because it's open platform, users are encouraged to design and build their own. It's me looking at it with my would-be engineer's mentality and industrial machine vision reporting experience thinking: How is this put together? What would happen if I changed this and tweaked that? that makes me think about other applications like military and industrial MV. I assume engineers will be, too.
Ann, could this be used by soldiers checking out dangerous locales? I know that many small drones are used in war zones, and I believe that Lockheed-Martin just introduced one in the past few days.
Ann, This is a very cool design and represents an interesting piece of technology. The 12 minute limitation on flying time does represent a bit of a downer, even though you can see why it's true. I assume the batteries are easily accessible and can be replaced to keep the fun times rolling.
I personally see an opportunity to put nano-drones to use in the Florida everglades. I envision swarms of nano-drones mounted with one sensor device capable of seeking out Burmese Pythons and one poison dart capable of delivering said Pythons a lethal dose.
Sounds Matrixy, but desperate situations call for outside of the box sci-fi thinking.
Otherwise, surprised that no one has started a snake canning/packing company to sell to Asia and other markets where snake meat is popular.
Yes, that's the sort of military drone app I had in mind when I saw the AR.Drone game platform (I've been calling it the Parrot because that's the maker's name and it kind of looks like one to me). Thanks for the info about Lockheed-Martin. I checked it out and found this reference (with video) to the Samarai, a small, spinning surveillance drone with a 360-degree view:
Is this the one you had in mind? It looks highly targeted to a surveillance app. But I'd be surprised if military developers aren't paying attention to potential inspiration in the consumer sector, such as the AR.Drone.
Al, the 12-minute flying time limit of the batteries is one of the various characteristics that screams "toy" about this design. But battery use and type, like other performance specs, can be altered by changes in both hardware and software.
I think JPW's nano-drone concept is interesting, although I would not have thought of using them as a device for snake seek-and-destroy missions. Sounds like you've got quite a problem over there! Hmmm, maybe I could use them out here for skunks, which can be quite a pest this time of year.
That's a great video, Ann. Yes, the Samarai is the one I had in mind. Your point about the consumer sector is well taken, however. Often the consumer sector finds ways to accomplish similar things on a shoestring budget.
OK, thought it must be the Samarai from your description. But this is so simple kids could have designed it; it's much less complex than the AR.Drone or the Japanese flying sphere, or even other stuff the military has done along these lines. Maybe the military needs to start hiring teenagers for their design team...
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
The 100-percent solar-powered Solar Impulse plane flies on a piloted, cross-country flight this summer over the US as a prelude to the longer, round-the-world flight by its successor aircraft planned for 2015.
GE Aviation expects to chop off about 25 percent of the total 3D printing time of metallic production components for its LEAP Turbofan engine, using in-process inspection. That's pretty amazing, considering how slow additive manufacturing (AM) build times usually are.
A $1,500, hand-operated, bench-model, plastic injection machine crowdsource-funded via Kickstarter can be used to mold small, quality, plastic parts inexpensively, on demand.
The federal government is launching competitions to kickstart three more manufacturing innovation institutes, including one focused on Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
3 
