Brookstone parrot drone12/27/2023 When my son tried flying the AR.Drone, a gust of wind carried it over the house. This machine is really well designed and thought-out. Alternatively there's an expert mode which takes a bit of practice (and a lot of crashes) to master. The AR.Drone has a beginner mode which reduces the sensitivity of the controls and limits the maximum height. Not surprisingly, tilting right and left moves the craft as you might expect, right and left respectively. The left hand onscreen control enables sensing the iPhone or iPod Touch pitch so if you tilt the iPhone or iPod away from you the craft moves forward, while tilting towards you moves the craft backward. It really is that easy.įlying is simple: You move the right hand on screen control up and down to increase or decrease height and left or right to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise (i.e. The machine will spin up its rotors and then autonomously rise to a height of about four feet and wait for you to take control. You start the AR.Drone by tapping the power button on the iPhone or iPod Touch screen. Power is supplied by an included Lithium Polymer battery providing a flying time of around 10 minutes (I'd recommend buying a second and even a third battery as they take about one hour to recharge which means an annoying wait between flights without another battery Brookstone sells them for $29.95 each). The whole system is controlled by an embedded Linux system running on a 468 MHz ARM9 processor with 128 MB of 200MHz DDR memory. It achieves this feat by monitoring the image of the ground to detect positional changes.Īnd there's more cunning tech: The 'copter's height is maintained by an ultrasonic altimeter on the underside of the craft which is effective up to a height of 19.7 feet while movement is detected and controlled by its own on-board, two-axis gyrometer, three-axis accelerometer, and a high-precision single-axis yaw gyrometer. Way cool.Īnd here's where the tech gets really clever: The downward facing camera is used to auto-stabilize the 'copter so that it can hold a position even in a light wind. You can watch the view of either or both cameras (the latter in picture-in-picture style) on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Now, when I write "controlled" I don't just mean using the usual keys or buttons, I mean you can fly the AR.Drone by simply tilting the iPhone or iPod Touch (these devices both have three-axis gyroscope systems that provide the control inputs).īut wait! There's more! The AR.Drone also has two color cameras on board one facing forward with a 93° wide-angle lens and VGA resolution (640 by 480 pixels) that operates at 30 frames per second, and another with a 64° lens that operates at 60 frames per second. Note that, contrary to what it says on the Brookstone Web site, there is no iPad application that can control the AR.Drone. Here is the video I shot at CES of the Parrot Drone.So, the tech involved: To begin with, the AR.Drone is controlled by an application that runs on the iPhone and the iPod Touch and communicates with the helicopter over an ad hoc Wi-Fi connection (an Android version is promised for the near future). The colors are also recognized by the AR.Drone’s front camera, allowing it to identify a competitor in two-player battles. Its vivid colors allow you to easily follow the movements of your AR.Drone in flight. This bundle kit for AR.Drone features an additional multi-colored outside hull that allows you to change the color of your AR.Drone for multiple-player aerial games.
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