Each precision flying ‘bot is capable of perfectly balancing itself, but their true power is in their ability to fly in formations, and even adjust to new 3-dimensional patterns on the fly and avoid obstacles autonomously. But enough talk – seeing 20 of these nano-quadrotors in action it is truly a sight to behold:

The way they all buzz around together, they’re reminiscent of an 1980s arcade shooter, aren’t they? I’m totally thinking Galaxian or Galaga. While each one is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, I still wouldn’t want to run into this swarm in a dark alley. There is serious power in numbers. We can only hope they don’t start adding weapons to them any time soon – and they don’t connect to Skynet.

The i-Fly Micro Lightning helicopter comes with an IR remote adapter that you can plug into your iOS device to control the copter using the iFly iOS app. It has eight minutes of flight per charge and can be controlled with up/down, left/right, and front/back movements. It can also be controlled using an included infrared remote. The i-Fly copter sells for $69.99 (USD).

The Sky Eye and the Black Swann both use 27MHz RF tech and are good for 110-feet of range. They have integrated cameras that can shoot video and still shots with a button press as well. The Black Swann has a microSD card slot for expanded storage and the Sky Eye has 512MB of internal storage. Each camera copter sells for $99.99, and should be available in stores soon.

[Press Release]

Logic Consulting has released a simple way for non-hackers to try this thanks to their Drone Station app for Mac. Simply install the app, connect a joystick, and you can control your AR.Drone from your laptop or desktop Mac. It works with a wide variety of game controllers including those from the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii too.

The higher signal strength of the Wi-Fi from a computer versus the one from an iPhone allows the pilot to control the drone over greater distances. There’s app also provides supplemental info on screen, such as altitude, attitude, direction, and battery gauges.

If you have a Parrot AR.drone, you can get the Drone Station app here for $9.99(USD). I guess if you already spent $300 on the drone, this app will be worth it.

[via Ubergizmo]

The team programmed a group of their versatile flying quadrocopters to construct a 19+ foot-tall structure autonomously, with no human involvement whatsoever. Just a roomful of bricks, and a small army of flying robots.

While they still don’t know how to apply mortar between bricks, the system proves that robots can work in concert to build precise structures, without incident or error. And given physical limitations of the ‘bots, these small flying machines are only lifting lightweight (appx. 1 lb.) foam “bricks” for their building.

For the foreseeable future, these flying robots won’t be stealing any construction jobs, but it is possible that similar technology could someday improve worksite safety, leaving some of the more difficult and dangerous tasks to robots, or robotic assistants. If nothing else, they could probably beat us at a game of foam brick Tetris.

Yves Rossy has been working on his jet-powered wingsuit for a while, and after having added a carbon-fiber wing, with four miniature jet engines, he was able to join some jet aircrafts to fly in formation for a demonstration over the Swiss Alps.

Granted, the jets are flying just above stall speed, and the jetpack is going at full throttle (between 120 and 180 mph), but it’s still cool.

Using Microsoft Flight Simulator X, the OVO-4 will emulate the twisting, pitching, slipping, accelerating and braking, on the runway. While in flight,  vibration systems replicate turbulence, runway irregularities, engine vibration and jolting from ignition.

Other features include: Sleeping inside when your wife sees the bill and kicks you out and the ability to set it to auto-pilot when you off yourself because you suddenly realize that your life savings are gone.

[via Firebox]

So remember when I said that such inventions would soon make their way in real life? Well, ladies and gentlemen, that time is now. The researchers at the Micro-Aviary at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base have been hard at work at fitting walls with super-sensitive motion capture sensors that will be able to track the position of a helicopter or small plane “within about a tenth of an inch.” Talk about precise.

The information from the sensors are then used to create ”very, very small flapping-wing vehicles,” says Greg Parker, who’s a part of the research team.

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There have been no officially released images or photos of the insect drones, although I doubt the military will be making them available anytime soon as they’re bound to be classified stuff.

[via Oh Gizmo!]

Having so many of these copters together makes sense in other ways too. The e-volo can lose a rotor or an engine and still land safely. Heck, it can even lose up to four at once and it will be okay.

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If that isn’t enough, compared to a regular helicopter, it’s simple. And less complication means less failure and more safety. The motors are all independent from each other, each with an off-the-shelf battery system and controller. That’s about it really. It gets 10-30 minutes in the air right now, but if they can improve the battery life, the possibilities are endless.

[via Dvice]

It can hover like a helicopter. It can fly forward at high speed using wings, which a helicopter can’t do. It’s got three gyros to help keep it stabilized, and can even roll around on the ground, and move itself about.

Since it’s round, it changes the way that a plane could/would behave, especially when it comes to attitude control. The round flying machine is made from commercially available parts and cost just $1,400 USD to make. It weighs 12.3oz and is 16.5 inches in diameter, and can reach speeds up to 37mph.

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It will be interesting to see what kind of aircrafts they’ll be able to make using this tech.

[via DigInfo.TV via Make:]

Using a variety of found objects and hardware, Laura (aka prixprix) created this awesome Inspector Gadget costume, complete with functional flying contraption. And while it doesn’t actually achieve lift-off at any point, the rotor is actually motorized, so maybe she could get off the ground with enough of an updraft. Here, check it out:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Pretty nifty, eh? If you want to give it a try for yourself, Laura has documented her build over on Instructables for you to follow for yourself. Anyone who can actually get theirs to propel them into the air will get a gold star in my book. Go, go, Gadget!

The big shocker is the price, you can buy a very nice new car for the price of one of these Epic cameras – but they’re still cheaper than high-end 35mm and 70mm cameras. I like RC toys as much as the next guy, but I would never fly the creation the folks at OMStudios in Germany have put together. The system is an octocopter with eight little motors and propellers arrayed around a horseshoe underneath the copter.

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Inside that big horseshoe shaped opening sits one of the crazy expensive RED Epic cameras. The copter can fly up to 150 meters in altitude and record in shocking clarity. I would rather not think of the repair bill if you crashed this awesome RC toy.

The 18-foot diameter circle is made from metal of some sort and in the center is a metal box securely wrapped in what appears to be plastic for the utmost safety during flight. The lift is provided by eight different motorcycle engines on their side bolted to the metal frame. Shu has about $3,135 invested in the machine, and this is his fifth model.

So far, Shu, who is a farmer by trade, has had one test flight in the courtyard that appears to have been conducted while tethered to the ground. The craft flew for about ten seconds. Obviously if something went wrong, and Shu fell from the basket he would be chopped into tiny bits by the staggered, whirring propellers – even if he were just a few feet off the ground.

[via BoingBoing]

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It’s name is Paraswift and it boasts an on-board video camera to film the jump. The bot was born from an unholy union between Disney Research and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. It’s the first bot in it’s size class to be able to both climb and fly. It may be showing off now, but it has some potential when it comes to serious uses as well. For instance it could gather aerial footage for 3D modeling systems and help with projects like Google Street View.

It climbs and sticks to surfaces thanks to a rotor spinning in a tube, which creates a vortex that lets it stick to the wall as it climbs. Think of it as a mini tornado. The pressures created make it stick to the wall.

Switching from climbing to flight needs some work and has been a challenge for the team. Right now, the paraglider is deployed by remote control by a mechanical arm. When the paraglider opens, the vortex is turned off and the robot simply falls off the wall.

All I can say is, look up and do it often. And wear a helmet.

[via New Scientist]

That said, I could never shoot photos like those that Rüdiger Nehmzow does. This dude has balls of steel covered in fleece. He takes his cloud photos up in the sky four miles above the ground, with the door to the airplane open. At that altitude, it is cold no matter what time of year and there isn’t enough oxygen for people to breathe normally.

That doesn’t stop Nehmzow though. He dons a jacket, grabs an oxygen tank, straps himself to the floor, and tosses the door open. Shooting photos without a window between the camera and the clouds makes for some undeniably awesome shots.

Check out Nehmzow working his airborne magic in the video below:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via PetaPixel]

This thing is a little capacitor with a motorized propeller on the opposite end. The idea is that you can put the Power Up inside your paper airplane and it will propel your creation for up to 90 seconds at a time. The capacitor is charged using a pack with three AA batteries inside. A 90-second flight takes 20 seconds of charging. The propeller is in the back of the airplane making it a “pusher” design.

The Power Up is made by Tailor Toys and it’s available on Amazon for about $15 (USD). I wonder if my poorly folded planes would be improved at all by this thing.

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[via Gizmag]

From the looks of it when the Kyosho copter lands in the States, it may be branded as a Griffin Technology offering. The toy is dubbed the Helo TC and it still looks awesome. The white rectangle with the copter is the Griffin unit and the larger image is the Kyosho copter, and they sure look similar to me. The copter is controlled using an app that is included for your iPhone. You can fly the toy all around your home with the smartphone.

This one also has LED lights on it so you can see the copter as you fly around in dim rooms. I have played with toy helicopters that look like this before with a normal remote control and they fly surprisingly well and are generally robust.  The Helo TC will sell for about $56 (USD) when it lands, and should arrive in time for Christmas.

[via SlashGear]

I’ve read about robotic blimp drones before, for military usage and in science-fiction, but it’s somewhat odd to see the concept used like this. The blimp also keeps track of the weather and other data so that you can remember everything about the environment when you later view the footage on your favorite social networking site.

The SEED can also act as a personal navigation device, projecting directions to a location of choice, and then guiding you along the route.

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I’m sure that parts of this concept will be made or already exist, albeit for military purposes, in order to create a low-cost flying drone. Actually, you could probably SEED a theater of war with these to get full sensor coverage. It would probably be much cheaper than deploying satellites.

[via Yanko Design]

By interfacing their already cool flying machines with a Microsoft Kinect rig, they’re able to pilot the quadrotor with simple arm gestures. The pilot can point in the direction they want the quadrotor to fly with their right arm. Left-arm movement causes the flying craft to do a flip. And if you stop pointing, it just hovers wherever you last instructed it to go. Here, see what I mean:

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I’ve seen a similar AR:Drone/Kinect hack before, but the control mechanics here seem much more intuitive. Hopefully someone will get this same thing worked out with the AR:Drone so we could try the same thing at home.

Yep, the US had airships back in the 1920s and 30s. The Macon served in the US Navy before going done in a storm in 1935. Jack’s model has a structure that mimics its 785 foot-long bigger brother. He used balsa wood sticks and Mylar for the skin of the airship, then filled it with helium, just like the original. His replica is RC-controlled and he hopes to donate it to the Moffett Field museum, where the original was docked. Jack is a retired computer engineer and saw the Macon regularly on his way to work.

It’s not just because of Fringe that I like airships – ever since James Bond’s A View to a Kill and the Indiana Jones movies, you wonder why airships haven’t become popular again. Maybe because they travel slower than some people expect. I, for one, hope that we’ll have mainstream airship transportation soon again.

[PopSci via DVice]

This time, they’ve trained a pair of their flying machines to bounce ping-pong balls between them. By mounting the head of a tennis racket to each one, and carefully positioning them, they’re able to get the ball to volley between the two. Here’s a video of the exciting ball juggling action.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I guess it’s more like a round of ping-pong than “juggling” per se, but it’s still pretty impressive. Sure it’s not like watching Nadal and Federer go at it, but they drop the ball fewer times than I usually do. What do you think the Swiss will teach their quadrocopters to do next? I hope they’ll get them to make some watches and chocolate.

[via YouTube]