Tag: Drone

If you grew up any time in the latter half of the 20th century or later, you’ve been promised that flying cars (and personal jetpacks) would someday take to the skies on a regular basis. While there certainly have been a number of concepts and prototypes over the years, living like the Jetsons has yet to materialize.

Daniel Riley of Stratus Productions built a super bright 1,000W LED flashlight. Then, he did what any inventive geek would – he managed to mount it to a powerful Freefly Alta drone. The result is a flying machine that can crank out some truly breathtaking aerial effects. You’ll be amazed by the beautiful visuals in the video below.

Amazon has been working on delivery by drone for a while now. And now the world’s largest online retailer has revealed its latest drone variant. The newly-revealed Amazon Prime Air delivery drone flies using a similar approach to VTOL aircraft, taking off and landing vertically, but orienting itself horizontally once airborne.

Drone designer Adam Woodworth has created some cool drones in the past like Imperial Star Destroyers for instance, but this one is even better: a giant LEGO helicopter. It looks like it came out of a genuine LEGO set, except it’s much bigger. The drone was shown off at this year’s Makers Fair in San Francisco.

Like bugs? The Robo Firefly is being called the first insect-like consumer drone. So if you have ever dreamed of piloting your very own insect in the skies, this is your chance. This flying critter is modeled after an insect, so this doesn’t make a lot of noise when it flies. Its wing motion mimics that of insects, making its flight highly efficient.

If you aren’t afraid of drone attacks on humans in the near future, you should be. And if your plan was to simply knock them out of the sky, well, forget that. Drones can now dodge balls that are thrown at them.

Typically, when you use a life preserver, you just throw it to the man overboard and hope for the best. If you suck at throwing, the person being rescued has to swim further to get to the life preserver, and that can put them in danger for longer.

Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Ante has a quirky looking flying machine that can actually fire rounds of ammo. The “experimental prototype combat drones violator” is a drone, a rifle, offering up its brand of death from above. The style of this drone looks like some kind of miniature WWII plane.

It looks like a UFO, but the conceptual ‘Feuxzy‘ drone has very earthly origins. It was created as a solution to keep forest fires at bay in rural areas and prevent them from getting out of control.

Generally speaking, drones have either vertical takeoff capabilities or they need a runway. However, a South African startup has a better way. Their solution is to add some legs to their drone. The Passerine Sparrow Jumper has fixed wings and legs and feet for takeoff and landing.

DJI is a maker of all sorts of slick drones that are meant for the series amateur or pro photographer wanting images from the sky. At CES 2019 DJI has announced a new Smart Remote controller with an integrated display.

Any thoughts that you had about running through a door to find safety from killer robots is now useless. These drones are no bigger than the palm of your hand, but they can work together to open a door.

Drones are a great search and rescue tool, but they would be even more impressive if they could change their size to fly through small holes. Well, the University of Zurich’s Robotics and Perception Group is showing off a shape-shifting drone that can do just that. The Morphing Quadrotor Drone is a foldable micro aerial vehicle (MAV) with vision-based navigation that allows it to fly on its own without the help of a human.

Well, it looks like Transformers are becoming a real thing if this basketball drone is any indication. But is it an Autobot or a Decepticon? It is definitely more than meets the eye. That’s all I know for sure. So yeah, objects like basketballs are now transforming into robots.

Drones can do all kinds of things, and now you can add window washing to the list. After all, washing windows is a dangerous job. Humans can die if they fall while working on a skyscraper.

One of the things that fans of the Harry Potter books and films remember the most is the game of Quidditch that the wizards play. Harry got to be the Seeker and tried to catch the Golden Snitch to win the game for his team.