I'm still blown away by how cool this thing is. If it costs less than $300 it will be huge. I'm certainly getting one, whatever the price.
The developers SDK is here. You can order a devkit, with prototype hardware, for $1,200 there.
Folks,
If you look at the fine print from ARDrones, you'll see that $1200 gets you a loan of the quadricopter, not a sale. They also likely won't let you just play around with this device...seems they are dead set on getting people to somehow use the quadricopter in game development. If you look at their license [on the ARDrones site], you will see that they seem pretty adament that this is for game development and nothing else. If you rummage around their site, they 'mention' selling the quadricopter, but I couldn't find any further data on how to buy it.
Jack, don't forget the Paparazzi is French too. The iphone bit is a gimmik but a great one. It actually is not that bad a controller. Re battery time, I read that the aussi quad copter has a longer battery life (for $60,000 it would want to), but they also feel that the ability to land for a while, have a look and then hop to a new location is a more reasonable use of quads , than flying high or far. Fixed wing are better for that .
What I like about this AR DRone is that it is using a downward facing camera for stabilisation. I have had a play with Open CV today to see if it is feasabile and I reckon it is. There are loads of feature tracking functions that output an array of points. This array and subsequent ones can be interpreted to determine motion or lack of it. I have quite a few small linux boards here, so I am going to see whether they can process the data quickly enough for RT stabilisation and assisted control without too much power draw. Mostly they draw between 3 and 5 watts .
Wurpfel,
I messed around the the (I think) agilent sensors a few years back but never thought to put a different lens on the sensor and see if it could determine motion at longer range. Worth a look but I think the resolution was only 16 *16 pixels
optic flow sensors are inside on PCmices, you have only to change the lens and ad a laserpointer for lighting the scene. works great, the mouseIC spit out XY deplacement, speed and acceleration.
when put to looks forward it avoid obstacles like a fly.
test it, its also arduino-compatible ;) and VERY funny on blimpduino or coax-choppers!
automatik, I wouldn't be surprised if it were using the AR Toolkit (opensource augmented reality system) to do the reality augmentation. From the released videos it looks like it's using a very simple marker tracker to find the position (not orientation) of the marker and overlay it using opengl. Nothing new :)
What I really like about the Parrot drone is the optical flow sensor. This video really caught my attention. The position hold accuracy is amazing.
Impressive amount of features for a country which gives 6 weeks vacation time.
Not sure looking at an iPhone screen to play games while something is flying around somewhere else is going to sell all that flight hardware. If it has to be viewed on the phone, battery capacity of the flying thing will definitely limit play time needlessly. The idea with augmented reality is to enhance real locations without placing markers. You're supposed to be able to fly it to 400ft & see advertizements superimposed on real locations. Corporate marketing.
Comments
Here's a CES video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPnh95fJLIE
If you look at the fine print from ARDrones, you'll see that $1200 gets you a loan of the quadricopter, not a sale. They also likely won't let you just play around with this device...seems they are dead set on getting people to somehow use the quadricopter in game development. If you look at their license [on the ARDrones site], you will see that they seem pretty adament that this is for game development and nothing else. If you rummage around their site, they 'mention' selling the quadricopter, but I couldn't find any further data on how to buy it.
What I like about this AR DRone is that it is using a downward facing camera for stabilisation. I have had a play with Open CV today to see if it is feasabile and I reckon it is. There are loads of feature tracking functions that output an array of points. This array and subsequent ones can be interpreted to determine motion or lack of it. I have quite a few small linux boards here, so I am going to see whether they can process the data quickly enough for RT stabilisation and assisted control without too much power draw. Mostly they draw between 3 and 5 watts .
Wurpfel,
I messed around the the (I think) agilent sensors a few years back but never thought to put a different lens on the sensor and see if it could determine motion at longer range. Worth a look but I think the resolution was only 16 *16 pixels
optic flow sensors are inside on PCmices, you have only to change the lens and ad a laserpointer for lighting the scene. works great, the mouseIC spit out XY deplacement, speed and acceleration.
when put to looks forward it avoid obstacles like a fly.
test it, its also arduino-compatible ;) and VERY funny on blimpduino or coax-choppers!
cheat:
a pinhole works nice as lense
What I really like about the Parrot drone is the optical flow sensor. This video really caught my attention. The position hold accuracy is amazing.
Not sure looking at an iPhone screen to play games while something is flying around somewhere else is going to sell all that flight hardware. If it has to be viewed on the phone, battery capacity of the flying thing will definitely limit play time needlessly. The idea with augmented reality is to enhance real locations without placing markers. You're supposed to be able to fly it to 400ft & see advertizements superimposed on real locations. Corporate marketing.