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One of the absolute coolest products I’ve seen of late is your own personal drone. It costs less than $300 and is a quadricopter (4-motor) carbon fiber plastic helicopter made by Parrott, called the AR.Drone. This little feloow does not have its own controls. It has an application that permits WiFi navigation by an iPhone, iPad, or Linux PC.
Mounted on its 21”x21” frame is a 93o wide-angle lens camera with a 640×480 resolution. That is the resolution of standard (non-HD) television.
The quadricopter flies at about 11 miles per hour and can stay up 12 minutes on its 3-cell battery pack. It utilizes its own gyroscopes and inertial guidance system. If you take your hands off the controls it just hovers
Now, flying the copter is a little tricky if there is much of a wind outside. My son, Harrison, is the lighting technician for a megachurch. They have a gigantic auditorium and when they get bored setting up equipment and programming a service, they fly the drone around inside the auditorium and up to the lighting catwalk. They have not figured a practical use for the AR.Drone except entertainment, which is not the worst thing in the world.
I recently did an article about a commercial drone for law enforcement. I raised some questions there about privacy, but that one had the capacity to do real surveillance. It also made more noise than a lawnmower. The AR.Drone is much quieter and could be really sneaky if the company put some effort into decibel work.
It weighs about a pound so the possibility of carrying a payload of any size will have to wait for larger motors and more innovation.
My big question is what do you do with a drone of your own, other than play around?
Some ideas: It could put a whole new meaning on being a Peeping Drone. Maybe the military or law enforcement could use it to look around the corner before they put their lives at risk. Perhaps deer hunters can use it to survey the area from overhead before they set up an ambush site. What we could do is start drone clubs. Maybe we could shift the USFirst robotics competitions to drones. That would seem more exciting to me.
I’m scratching my head on what to do with little drones like these, so I’m open to creative ideas. Clearly, they will be more capable and more prevalent in the near future.