FLYING GADGETS.
Parrot-Although a home-build quadrocopter community has sprung up
recently, most of us don’t have the time or the know-how to construct
our own drone. Thankfully, you don’t need an
engineering degree
to start flying quadrocopters. The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 is ready to fly
straight from the box, and controlled by wi-fi using an ordinary
smartphone or tablet. There’s a high-definition camera inside the
casing, and after installing the AR.FreeFlight 2.0 on your
mobile device,
you can download games and geolocation data on the best flying zones.
In fact, the only thing you need to learn is how to fly the thing
properly. Otherwise, you’ll be spending a lot of money on superglue.MSN
UK Tech & Gadgets
Sensefly-A
stealth plane in a
suitcase – that was our first thought when we saw the Swinglet CAM. It’s
not quite that advanced, however; you’d need a shrink ray to achieve
that, and sadly they don’t exist. Yet. This flying machine is still
mightily impressive though, featuring a high-resolution 12MP camera for
covert
surveillance, or (if you’re not a spy)
aerial photography.
A wingspan of 80cm and weight of less than half a kilogram means it can
be launched by hand if needs be, while built-in artificial intelligence
would enable it to even fly missions without any human input.MSN UK
Tech & Gadgets
Igarashi
Design-If you’re bored of getting stuck in traffic, then you’ll
probably be hoping that the Igarashi Helicopter will soon become a
reality, rather than just a clever concept device. Instead of bellowing
and smashing your fists against the wheel of your car, you could be
zipping along high above the traffic in this one-man flying machine.
Well, at least until someone decides to introduce
toll booths in the sky.MSN UK Tech & Gadgets
Yanko Design / Zhu Wenxi, Lai Zexin, and Pan Jiazhi-Ah, the flying car –
so long the dream of commuters and sci-fi geeks, and yet still no
closer to becoming reality. We can still keep hoping, however. The
latest concept model we wish we could drive (or should it be ‘fly’?) is
called the ‘Yee’. Small and versatile, it’s designed to allow commuters
to speed their way through the skies to work. It can operate as a
four-wheeled road vehicle too; the propellers are situated in the back
wheels to maximise the room inside. But however cool the Yee might be,
it’s still no flying DeLorean – the ultimate flying car for anyone born
in the 80s.MSN UK Tech & Gadgets
Yanko Design / Jacob Lalinsky-’Argh, me hearties, what be that off our
starboard bow? An albatross come to guide us to untold riches? Or could
it be…OMG it’s a frickin’ Crows Nest Anti-Pirate UAV! Abandon ship!’
Granted, that’s not a wholly accurate
representation
of how Somali pirates would react upon seeing this concept drone
approaching, but you get the idea. Crows Nest Anti-Pirate UAVs are
designed to fly in rings around cargo ships as they sail the seven seas,
acting as the ultimate pirate deterrent. If one of the drones detects a
strange boat within the ships perimeter an alarm is sounded, giving the
crew time to sharpen their cutlasses and extend the canons. Or
something like that.MSN UK Tech & Gadgets
Graupner-Apparently this quadrocopter is an ‘ideal starter size’ drone,
which presumably means it won’t kill anyone if you crash it into their
head while trying to land. A stablisation system with various different
settings means it can be tailored to everything from docile to agile
flight, and depending on which battery is fitted, you can also load up
to 500g of weight. It can therefore be used for a variety of different
tasks, such as aerial photography and night flight. This four-rotor
marvel is controlled by an ordinary remote control; the duration of each
of flight depends upon the size of the batteries. That and whether or
not you can avoid something we call a ‘dual thumb malfunction’.MSN UK
Tech & Gadgets
DigInfo News (diginfo.tv)-OK, now this one is seriously creepy. Aside
from looking like some sort of floating camera from a Hunger Games-style
game show where contests are forced to battle to the death, it moves
around in a disturbingly agile way. It can hover in mid-air, for
example, as well as fly vertically and horizontally at speeds of up to
40 miles per hour. Three gyro sensors in the body keep it airborne even
if it’s hit and it can even roll along the ground like some sort of evil
football. The drone was designed by the Japanese defence ministry, and
built from spare parts costing a mere US$1,400.MSN UK Tech & Gadgets
Firebox.com-At first glance we thought the JetLev Flyer was just another
crazy concept gadget. But no, it’s actually real – a personal flying
machine that runs on a complicated water pressure system. The JetLev
Flyer is the result of nine years of development, and it’s a dream come
true for anyone who’s ever wanted to act out
Super Mario
Sunshine, or zip around a marina in a manner that would make James Bond
jealous. Running on a four-stroke engine, this amazing machine lets you
hover 1 -feet above the water; the top speed is around 30mph. Users can
even dive beneath the sea in short bursts, before leaping skyward again
like a strange human/dolphin hybrid.MSN UK Tech & Gadgets
Graupner-Have you ever seen anyone crash a remote-controlled plane? The
dull, distant thud as someone’s beloved flying machine is reduced to a
pile of smoldering plastic is truly horrifying. With the 500X-S Quad
Flyer, however, such mishaps aren’t quite as stomach churning. This
quadrocopter uses a minimal amount of parts in its design, so as well as
being easy to assemble
out of the box,
it’s also relatively easy to reassemble when you hand the controls to
one of your friends and they promptly plough it into the ground.MSN UK
Tech & Gadgets
University of
Pennsylvania GRASP Lab-Created by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s General
Robotics,
Automation,
Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, the autonomous quadrotor is
designed to fly with incredible precision, flipping and scooting through
tiny gaps, as well as perching on surfaces. Normally several are
deploted at a time, as a swarm, working in harmony to achieve certain
goals, such as hunting down the enemies of their human masters…just
kidding. In a video presented at the TED2012 conference, a team of
quadrotors even managed to perform the James Bond theme on a variety of
instruments. Personally, we think the Terminator theme would have been
more fitting, but there you go.MSN UK Tech & Gadgets
The culprit is a new Trojan horse program,
tame as it were, created by security researchers at Pennsylvania State
University. It takes advantage of a flaw in Google's Android mobile
operating system that lets background apps monitor the device's sensors
-- like the accelerometer, which detects movement and orientation.
