Tag: Drone

Want to encourage the ladies to kiss you during the holiday season? Nothing beats the Mistletoe Drone from Hammacher Schlemmer. This compact remote control drone is outfitted with a festive mistletoe design. That’s one way for a nerd to get some action.

If you don’t want to fly your drone to it’s destination and then meet it there later, you can always just carry it the old fashioned way. But drones can be hard to carry when you have to carry other stuff with you as well.

Ever wonder why you wouldn’t want to get your finger caught in the blades of a drone? Watch this video and find out. Watching things like fruit, donuts, sausages and other things fall like rain in slow-motion and be chopped up by this drone’s blades is truly hypnotic.

With Christmas on Friday, you can bet that lots of folks around the US will be getting a shiny new drone under the Christmas Tree. Consider this a PSA that could prevent you from being fined thousands of dollars and potentially sent to prison.

Back in the summer, we saw this awesome R2-D2 drone that flew around using some sort of ducted propulsion with no propellers sticking out anywhere. This time out we have a DIY R2-D2 drone that isn’t quite as self-contained, but might actually be something you can build yourself.

Last week, I showed you guys a drone that had a flamethrower attached, and was cooking a turkey. That flame-throwing drone could just as easily be used to attack people or property. With that in mind, the Tokyo police have a plan to stop nefarious drones before they can cause problems.

This drone with a flamethrower attached looks to me like a one-way ticket to a federal holding cell. This can’t be legal, can it? I mean, this is a DIY drone that has a freaking flamethrower that can throw said flames a good 25 yards.

We’ve seen quadcopters and robots that can fly and walk (or roll), and one that can swim and walk. The Naviator drone on the other hand is equally adept at flying and swimming underwater. Prof. Javier Diez and several of his students at Rutgers University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering have been working on the Naviator for years, but it took off earlier this year when they received $618,000 (USD) from the United States’ Office of Naval Research (ONR), who were apparently extremely impressed by the prototype.

Even though consumer UAVs are becoming smarter and easier to use, they can still cause physical harm. Just last month a baby lost one of his eyes because he was accidentally hit by a quadcopter’s propeller.

In the not too distant future, you may be able to have Amazon goods delivered within just a half hour’s time. How will it work? Former Top Gear host (and future Amazon car show host) Jeremy Clarkson explains the upcoming Amazon Prime Air drone-based delivery service in a new video.

PowerUp Toys continues to modernize the paper airplane. Its latest effort, the FPV, practically packs enough tech for a consumer drone, including a camera, Wi-Fi video streaming and an autopilot mode. The onboard camera only has a 640×480 resolution, but that’s still infinitely better than nothing.

Humans are getting better at taking out drones in all sorts of ways. Like shooting them with hockey pucks, or with a special drone rifle. I’m proud of our people. Keep training, and one day, when the robots try to enslave us, we will revolt and kill them all.

One time I was out at the racetrack and there was a videographer there filming footage of cars for some TV show. His drone was super fancy and had a high-end video camera underneath it. It went wonky and suddenly climbed to what seemed like a thousand feet and tumbled into the distance.

We are always complaining that we should have robots that will do our chores by now. Well, the truth is that we do, we just have to think outside of the box. Why not let your drone do some cleaning for you.

Some people love drones, and other hate them because of privacy and safety concerns. If you are a drone hater, you are going to love this. The Battelle DroneDefender is a rifle that is designed to take over radio control of drones so you can bring them to the ground.

A couple of weeks ago we checked out ETH Zurich Autonomous Systems Lab’s walking robot that had a drone launching pad. That combos nicely with one of the Lab’s latest projects: a similar pair working together to navigate unknown terrain.