I made a presentation about UAV::Pilot last night, which is a library for controlling the Parrot AR.Drone under Perl. The video is up on YouTube:

I also announced the start of the WumpusUAV Indiegogo project. This aims to fill what I see as a hole in the market. The AR.Drone is comparatively cheap, but it's not completely open, and it has limits. ArduPilot is quite a bit more expensive (especially if you're starting from scratch with no previous RC experience), but it's open and you can do whatever you want with it.

I looked around, and I didn't see anything that started cheap, was open, and had limitless possibilities. So I decided to fill that gap.

Hi all, I'm the creator of UAV::Pilot, a library for controlling the Parrot AR.Drone under Perl. It supports controlling the AR.Drone, its nav data stream, and real-time video display.

If you happen to be around Madison, WI, you can come join us for a presentation that I'll be giving on Sept 10. If you're not into programming but just want to check out some flying robots, feel free to come; I'll be covering the basics of drones along with the programming parts.

For those of you who can't make it, I should have a video up on YouTube afterword.