Tuesday 26 June 2012

Quadrocopters

I have recently upgraded my Parrot AR Drone to the new 2.0 version. The new version features a number of upgrades but there are two in particular which are really standing out so far.

The front facing camera has been upgraded to 720P HD quality. This is much better than the first Parrot drone which had a camera which really wasn't great. Unfortunately the new camera uses a rolling shutter which means that at times the video can be quite wobbly but mostly the video quality is good enough to still be impressive.

The other big upgrade in the 2.0 is the addition of an "Absolute Control" mode where control is done relative to the pilot rather than relative to the drone. For example, this means that when you tilt your iPad towards you the drone will move towards you rather than simply moving backwards. This makes flying the drone much easier!

Here are a couple of videos from some flights which I did today.



The Parrot 2.0 delivers impressive performance for a relatively low price tag. However, it is interesting to see what can be achieved if you have a (much) higher budget. The OktoKopter-XL costs >£5K-£10K for the drone + camera + other necessary parts and can produce some really impressive videos such as the following.


MikroKopter - Zoom from Holger Buss on Vimeo.


MikroKopter - Wind turbine from Holger Buss on Vimeo.