Holy crap this looks cool. WowWee, makers of the popular Robosapien, are preparing to take to the air with the Dragonfly.
The Dragonfly is a radio controlled device doesn’t seem to have any AI, but what it lacks in brains, it makes up in flight. That’s right, the Dragonfly is capable of impressive duration flights. It’s able to fly for about 15 minutes on one charge.
Sure it flaps wildly and looks like it could probably put out an eye, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like a lot of fun. I’d like to get one to terrorize my cat with.
The crew over at T3, the self-proclaimed “world’s No. 1 gadget mag,” has gotten its paws on on a Dragonfly and has put up a video taste. Check it out.
Dragonfly robot filmed [T3 via Engadget]
It does look cool, but it also looks very hard to control.
It would be great if it was easy to control, flew for a real long time on one battery charge and… Well, that’s all I can think of because it seems rather cool otherwise.
I’m with Blake, “holy crap!” I have no idea what i would actually do with that thing and am quite sure that the novelty would ware off pretty quick but it certainly on my Christmas list.
As a guy who has tried to build UL aircraft, mad props to the guys at WowWee. I think I read an article on CrunchGear at somepoint about this and was interested, but that video was pretty sweet.
It is hard enough to built the actual plane that will last long enough to have any sort of fun, but developing the system to control it at the same time is quite a feat.
Flying however looks like a pain, it’s a lot of ups and downs to avoid stalling and the subsequent divebombs into the cement floor, but I guess that comes with the unique motor system.
Hopefully however there will be no lame commercials for this like there have been for the Robosapien.
I can’t wait till they mod the Dragonfly, like they did to the Robosapien. I personally didn’t see the appeal in the Robosapien but the flying aspect of The Dragonfly makes it quite desirable.
I have personally never flown an airplane or even a toy plane, but I think the difficulty in flying such a device comes from our inate inability to navigate in 3d. I think evolutionarily we are wired to only move in 2d. For the most part, we never do travel on the Z-axis and thats why its really difficult for us to navigate such a device as can be seen in the video.
I had a question to the people who have personally flown a toy plane or even a real one, how is the learning curve? (I want to treat myself to a plane, obviously a toy one)
Rewatching the video, I think that increasing the speed of the flapping might make for a smoother flight, like a hummingbird. True, it would be at a sacrifice to flight time, though. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these.
Amit:
Learning to move with an up and down was surprisingly easy. I think a big bonus with something like the Dragonfly is that it could take a lot of punishment without exploding. In addition, the relatively slow flight makes it a little bit easier to correct any errors (such as going down instead of up).
The problem with hacking this likes this is that these models/toys are really bareboned, so hacking is pretty difficult because most of these toys simply can’t handle any more wingspeed without motors burning out or batteries frying or wings flying off. But hopefully the designers built enough safety factor room that we could have a little fun with it.
That is so awesome. Just wait to see what they have next year.
hahaha…that’s looks awesome. I cant wait to get one just to watch my cat go nuts..ack-ack-ack..
It’s pretty mind blowing stuff, but am I the only person who thinks it’s going to go to waste? Geeks aren’t going to pick it up becuase it’s too light and balanced to be able to mod it up, and kids are just going to clip its wings for the fun of it.
Then again, maybe the technology will be used to cure global warming two years from now and I’ll be eating my words
I just bought one of these
http://www.hobbytron.com/RCHelicopterElectricPicooZ85615.html
Smallest RC helicopter, much easier to control and $30 at Toys R Us.
I’m gonna get one of these and it’ll be a battle royal!
Where’s my huge fly swatter????
I can just see this thing getting stuck in my hair.
This is really neat… now if they can only program it to kill mosquitoes – then they got my money!
Jon