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3D Robotics

What is this strange old quadcopter?

Posted by Chris Anderson on October 19, 2010 at 12:30pm

Our IT guys found this in a closet. It's an old quadcopter that uses thermopiles rather than gyros for stabilzation. It's RC only, but it's got a big old webcam on a stalk. Like a Parrot AR.Drone from the dark ages!


The only identifying writing on the board says "Spectrolutions, 2004" and when you Google that it comes up with this site, which shows a very similar board with "Draganfly" markings. Maybe this is a prototype of an earlier version of the current DraganFly?


[Update: it looks like it is indeed a prototype of the DraganFly V, which came out that year. Here's a good pictoral history of that development]


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Comments

  • michael dunston October 21, 2010 at 2:10pm
    hahahaha that was funny. yep that is it..
  • Moderator
    Gary Mortimer October 21, 2010 at 3:48am
    I was recently shown one of those things as the very latest in things at an aeronautical university!!!! It probably is the exact inspiration for the ARdrone.
  • Jason October 20, 2010 at 8:48pm
    It looks just like the Draganflyer V we had in school. I used one of these as the platform for my thesis project. I took their electronics off and put my own on, so I could have a full IMU based autopilot. On a minor note, the draganflyer V does still have gyros on it to provide stability. The thermopiles just replace the accelerometer portion of the IMU by detecting the horizon instead of gravity.
  • Ron Jacobs October 20, 2010 at 3:26pm
    It would make a good T3 prize or something.
  • Moderator
    Alex October 20, 2010 at 10:40am
    lol thats a cool thing to find :P.. u gonna give it a try?
  • Ground Loop October 19, 2010 at 10:40pm
    No way..

    Oh, wow, he's right:
    http://www.wired.com/about/staff_magazine/

    Where do you find the time? Amazing.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson October 19, 2010 at 10:07pm
    I'm the editor of Wired magazine, so it's not so unusual ;-)
  • Developer
    Ryan Beall October 19, 2010 at 3:49pm
    Yeah I recognize it as a early dragonfly. I remember that goofy camera pod thing. If I remember right, that was the more expensive version because it had the camera? That's all I got.

    -Beall out
This reply was deleted.