Player Attack: Just like its smartphone-controlled predecessor, the shiny new AR.Drone 2.0 features an on-board camera. This transmits onto the pilot’s device screen exactly what the quadricopter sees. This makes for a fascinating flight experience – and the hardware upgrade bumps up the quality, introducing 1280×720 resolution to the mix.
Fans of the Parrot AR.Drone now have a central online location where they can meet up, hang out, and share flight content with other drone pilots. The brand new AR.Drone Academy is a part of the freshly updated AR.FreeFlight, which also now includes video sharing, data tracking, geolocalisation, and - wait for it - identification of the best flying spots around the world.
At last year’s E3, French company Parrot revealed its AR.Drone. It’s a flying machine – a quadricopter – and instead of a traditional radio control unit, you can pilot the aircraft using your mobile phone. Until recently, the technology was only available for iOS, but a recent update has seen the doors opened for Android smartphones, Samsung’s Bada, and Nokia handsets.
We caught up with Parrot's Vice President of Marketing & Communication, Cristina Sanz, while at E3 2011, to chat about what’s new for the company. She told us all about the developers that are using the AR.Drone technology, how the app and the Drone works, and a little bit about what’s coming up in the future.
Back when the iPhone launched, Steve Jobs talked about being able to use other peripherals alongside some of the applications that developers were working on. Developers showed off a heart monitor hookup, a method of docking your iPhone into a DJ's mixing station, and of course, the influx of alarm clocks. But here steps in the AR Drone for a unique take on a "peripheral."
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