Dancing Parrots – Robot Air-Show

AR.drone, maker of the Parrot AR.Drone has put up an cool dance show at the Paris Airshow 2013, where the performers are eight miniature drones. The miniature drones are demonstrating excellent close formation flying capabilities, which could be applied in the future to swarm techniques. These techniques and applications of other robots from Parrot are covered in the associated article linked above. For more videos from the Paris Air Show tune to Defense-Update VideoReport channel on youtube.

This is the Parrot show, starring eight AR.drone 2.0 quadcopters, performing their show every few minutes at a specially geared scene located at the static display, near the IAI corral. Designed for outdoor or indoor use, the Parrot AR.drone carries an HD video camera and is intuitively controlled via an android or iOS (iPhone or iPad) devices. On the choreographed display here at the Airshow the eight drones are operated individually, sequenced to synch maneuvers and queued by the graphical patterns on the floor to keep away from each other.

The drone has a smart stabilization system used here to perform impressive stunts including flips and rolls, without losing control. The main difference between the outdoor and indoor units is the rotor guard used in the indoor model. Each drone is powered by 1000mA Lithium Polymer battery, driving the our electrical motors running at 28000 RPM, driving independently controlled rotors that deliver the maneuverability and stabilization control. sufficient for 12 minutes of flight. A more powerful cell can increase endurance to 18 minutes.

Controlling the drones is done via the AR.FreeFlight app downloaded free from Google Play or AR.Drone app available on the Appstore.

While the AR.Drone may be considered a recreational drone, Parrot is also offering a professional, fully autonomous aerial mapping system, dubbed Swinglet Cam. This electrically powered mini drone weighs only 500 grams (1.1 lbs) but carries a 16 Megapixel camera that collects aerial photography of areas up to 6 km2 on a single flight. Multiple drones can operate simultaneously to cover a larger area in a short period of time. The drone uses a built-in autopilot to provide safe, fully autonomous flight from takeoff to landing.

The Swinglet Cam mission is planned and controlled via eMotion 2 that provides mission planning and monitoring, control, recovery and safety control. The system can control multiple drones simultaneously, thus accelerating area coverage. Postflight Terra LT post-mission processing system supports users analyzing image overlaps, creating an orthomosaic within minutes, at 25% of the original image resolution, while the survey team is still in the field. This mode provides a useful function, where it provides the background map for the days’ mission planning.

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