AR.Drone flies in the gymnasium at Washington & Lee's Spring-Term Fair

This video, courtesy of Professor Ken Lambert, shows senior Sam Reed '10 flying a prototype AR.Drone quad-rotor helicopter from an iPad. Sam's work enabled flying the drone to from this new tablet device, and projecting the image from the drone's camera to a video screen via the iPad.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• AR.Drone
• drone
• UAV
• iPhone
• iPad

[simondlevy]

Very easy to fly, using an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you take your hands off the controls it just hovers in place.

[disillusions]

@Phosphorus16

Hey thanks for responding. I don't own one, at least yet, but was curious about what it's capable of. Sounds like it's range is roughly the width of a football field squared, and you wouldn't want to try flying it higher than a two story house.

It would be fun if you were somehow able to use satellite and GPS technology to control and track it (reliably of course).

[Phosphorus16]

@disillusions The max range is 50 meters. The maximum recommended altitude is six meters, since the ultrasound sensors do not work further.

If your question is which parameter will prevent you from flying higher than that, with an iPhone connected (and altitude limitation disabled), the Wifi signal will be lost long before the drone reaches its limits (flying at 100m high should be the limit).

In any case, my main message is : DO NOT TRY

[disillusions]

What is the range of this thing? Not only with regard to altitude, but how far away can you fly this thing before the connection starts getting iffy?

[AkkeDaBest]

is it hard to fly?