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iPhone-Controlled Helicopter With AR Games

Posted by Soulskill on from the get-to-da-ichoppa dept.

andylim writes "Parrot has unveiled a remote-controlled helicopter that boasts augmented reality games. The helicopter is controlled using an iPhone or iPod Touch's accelerometer and touchscreen. There's a camera on the front of the helicopter, which you can use to navigate and to play augmented reality games, including a game that involves fighting a gigantic robot."

16 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. An iPod? by c0mpliant · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seriously, if other games controls on the iPod are anything to go by, I wouldn't want to be controlling a helicopter with spinning rotor blades, with an iPod

    --
    There is no -1 disagree
    1. Re:An iPod? by fractoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It seems pretty stable from the video. I wonder how well this electronically-stabilised-quadricopter technology would scale to, say, human-sized? :D I did a bit of research on blade loadings and suchforth and it seems that a helicopter weighing 200kg with pilot would need 30-40kW to lift off, can anyone with more experience confirm or deny? I'd love to see something with the same format but, say, 2m long, powered by nanophosphate lithium batteries with a 5-10min flight time.

      Of course the AR stuff is also cool. I bet there's a market for that... run a service where your users print a specific patterned logo in a print ad, register it with your site, and on a phone running the right application the pattern loads a video or even 3D virtual animated object anchored to the logo.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    2. Re:An iPod? by Heavy+Machinery · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You hit the nail on the head: the problem is power/weight. Looking at the specs http://www.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/how-does-it-work#start/ it looks like the batteries are expensive lithium-ion-polymer with "15 minutes battery autonomy", which I assume is a fancy way of saying that you get 15 minutes run flying time between recharging.

    3. Re:An iPod? by LordVader717 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Stability is mainly a problem for small, toy-sized craft. Another reason why multiple rotors are used is so that they can cancel out each others torque, so you don't need a tail-rotor. Personal aircraft similar to what you described have been made like these
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VZ-1_Pawnee
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoloTrek_XFV

      They obviously don't run on batteries. I don't know what the largest battery-powered craft ever made is, but even for model planes they were totally impractical just a few years ago.

    4. Re:An iPod? by jcr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The reason why iPhone/iPod touch makes such a great controller is because of the accelerometer's high sampling rate. It tops out at 400hz

      I've been saying for months that the iPhone would make a great autopilot. It's cheap, it's light, it's got hours of battery life, it has GPS + compass + acceleration sensing, and the USB on the dock connector could easily be adapted to any of the USB servo controllers that are available off the shelf.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    5. Re:An iPod? by tolan-b · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The default software comes for iPhone/iPod but they've published an API and open sourced the demos. Good on them, this thing has great potential, hope it doesn't cost too much :)

    6. Re:An iPod? by goodmanj · · Score: 2, Interesting

      for model planes they were totally impractical just a few years ago.

      Not true anymore. One of the side effects of the cell phone revolution is that their high-tech batteries and the micro-motors that make the phone vibrate allow you to build some great electric aircraft.

      http://www.ezonemag.com/

  2. Scale it up! by jcr · · Score: 2, Funny

    Once that device has a five-mile range and can carry a pizza and a six-pack, its market potential is enormous.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:Scale it up! by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yep its what the US does best:

      • Music
      • Microcode
      • High speed pizza delivery
      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  3. Video Latency by Plazmid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now the question is, is the video coming out of this thing in real time or near real time(laggy)? Soldiers testing man portable reconnaissance UAVs found the latency of near-real time video to be extremely annoying....

    1. Re:Video Latency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      My company worked on this project as an external contractor.

      We've done the AR software embedded in the drone, as well as the Robot Fighting demo on the iPhone.

      I can say that for the moment the video stream is not perfect, and quite annoying for a quality AR experience.

      But this project will not be sold until several months, I hope it will be improved.

    2. Re:Video Latency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The video stream is processed on the drone before being sent to the iPhone.

      The pose estimation (3D matrices) is sent along the navigation and control data.

      We also hope to see more AR games on the iPhone, but currently Apple is locking the real time video processing...

      But there are other AR capable devices out there :)

      You can see some demos of our work on our blog :

      http://www.int13.net/blog/en/

      and here

      http://www.mobile-augmented-reality.com/

  4. Augmented Reality Stuff inside by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hi,

    I'm the boss of the company which created the computer vision software embedded in the drone, and also the Augmented Reality game demo on the iPhone.

    You can check it out here :
    http://www.int13.net/ardrone-the-first-flying-toy-using-augmented-reality/en/

    I have to post it here, 'cause they don't seem to credit us for our hard work...

  5. Cars by FlyingBishop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Back when I was a kid, I never understood why they could make a game like gameboy camera, but they couldn't trade out that camera for an antenna connected to a car with a camera on it.

    I suppose we still don't have it thanks to privacy concerns, but it would be so badass.

  6. WIFI range?! by An+anonymous+Frank · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm having trouble finding what I think is the essential stat: (battery life is 15 minutes, but) what is the wifi range?

  7. I Fly e- powered R/C by DRAGONWEEZEL · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The drones are allready there. You can put an R/C plane in the air in 1 hr for about $200 to take ariel video.

    Spend ~700 you can get FPV AV and still pics and a gyro stabalized plane.

    Spend ~900 and you can get FPV, and data logging including path traveled, altitude, airspeed, and gps.

    Spend 1K (that's most of our payechecks) and you can get all the above with waypoints and return to home.

    Spend just another hundred more, and you can power that setup for over 45 min. in the air. Oh, and it's silent. Next to no noise as percieved from the ground.

    It's pretty scary actually, but I love how inexpensive the hobby has gotten. I'm not into the telemetry side yet, but I've done AV. I'm more of a speed / 3D freak at the moment. I've got a 100mph plane whose power setup was about $120 from a place in hong kong. I can fly it top speed for about 7 min or pulse glide for over 1/2 hr. It's sweet!

    --
    How much is your data worth? Back it up now.