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DraganFly III Gyro-stabilized RC Helicopter
Pronoun54 writes "It hovers! It spins! It spies!
The Draganflyer III weighs just 17 ounces with its high-tech stabilization system. "As an eye in the sky, the Draganflyer III can be used indoors or out, up to a mile away, to take aerial views of real estate, promote products at trade shows, or give the guy in the next cube a close encounter he won't soon forget." "One more advantage of the Draganflyer III: if you're grounded by bad weather, you can still open the throttle and hover indoors." Their site has videos of this thing in action both indoors and out. Seems like it can move pretty fast at top speed." The Times has a piece talking about the piezo gyroscopes (including purty pictures) that the chopper uses to self-stabilize.
I submitted this article almost two month ago when I saw it on Apple's website. Is this the normal turn around on articles? Soooooo Loooooooong.
Others have already pointed out the open source Autopilot project.
The Draganflyer is limited to 5 minutes because it's so small and light, and runs on batteries. If you go with one of the more established conventional helis, you can get longer flight times. The longest times are still achieved by combustion engines, using either model fuel or regular gasoline, and it's quite easy to achieve more than 15 minutes with one of those.
However, I don't think it's any accident that the Draganflyer has an unconventional four-rotor design - this allows it to avoid many of the instabilities that a regular helicopter suffers from, and probably makes the job of programming an autopilot for it much easier.
Still, computer-controlled regular helis, even fully autonomous ones, are possible and have been done. There's even an annual International Aerial Robotics Contest. The site doesn't seem to be responding right now (secondary /. effect?), but here's one of the previous entries, the MIT/Draper Autonomous Helicopter Project.
In the past, these have been pretty expensive devices to put together. Nowadays, as the Draganflyer proves, it's not as expensive as it used to be. The piezo gyros are pretty cheap - in the $100 range for a decent one. Building your own computer-controlled helicopter is definitely doable. The Sourceforge project is probably a good place to start, especially since it'll be a lot easier if it's not a one-man project.
Aerial surveillance and photography and stuff would be a neat little hobby
Not with this. It only flies for five minutes. What you need for longer flight times is an RC Airship. They can fly for quite a bit longer as the gas does the lifting, and the battery just powers steering. The cost is in the thousands of US dollars however.
FMA direct makes an awesome 'co-pilot' for helicopters. It basically does the same thing this one does except that the Draganfly is the first helicopter that comes with it in the package.
The guy that runs the local hobby shop here is really into planes and used to fly helicopters. He had never heard about the FMA co-pilot. I ordered one and a helicopter from him and he was amazed with how easy it is to fly once we got it all together. He described it as cheating. heh.
All that considered. The $1000 helicopter is fun and all but I have more fun with my friends with a couple or four Fighterbirds from Hobby Zone. They have an infrared or ir sensor/receiver system that lets you dogfight. LOTS of fun.
The Vectron Flying Saucer is insanely fun and less than $100.
:-)
Check out this Tech TV article.
I bought one recently and my only regret is not letting the Vectron have it's recommended cool-down breaks. I was having too much fun and the constant use killed it in one weekend.
If you don't have vaulted ceilings, get some.