quadcopter

18 rotors and up: E-volo shows personal helicopter prototype

HANOVER, Germany--Enough with the cutesy little quadcopter drones.

Instead of pint-sized four-rotor aircraft good enough to experiment with swarm dynamics or to carry small cameras, German startup E-volo is building an 18-rotor model that can carry a human passenger. It's the latest attempt to realize the dream of the flying car.

The Karlsruhe-based company plans to begin selling its VC200 in 2015, said Jeromin Schwenk, a student with the Karlsruhe University of Applied Science who's one of about 60 people working on the project.

"It's going to be the personal aircraft for everyone," Schwenk said, … Read more

Remote-vision quadcopter soars over LeWeb

PARIS -- LeWeb's focus this year on "the Internet of things" this year brought Net-enabled door locks, houseplant monitors, and footstep loggers to the conference stage. But the gadget that caught the most attention was a remote-controlled quadcopter.

Quadcopters are all the rage these days, popularized best by the Parrot AR.Drone. Here at LeWeb, startup Team BlackSheep showed its take on the tech with a model that's remotely piloted by an operator who sees what's going on from a camera mounted on the drone itself.

Raphael Pirker, founder of the company, piloted a TBS … Read more

Hexcopter robot takes to the Defcon skies

LAS VEGAS--Parallax is the company that makes the hackable Defcon badges, but it's even better known for another hackable product: its ELEV-8 robotic quadcopter, soon to be expandable to six rotors.

The hexcopter kit adds more lifting power to the ELEV-8, doubling the payload thanks to an extra battery along with the extra rotors. It can now hold most cameras, for remote robotic airborne surveillance. Parallax representatives said that it also makes the ELEV-8 more stable in flight.

Parallax says that the kit is likely to be available around the end of August, and will run you another $200. … Read more

This DeLorean quadcopter flies back to the future

What happens when you take a quadcopter and add a homemade DeLorean shell?

The Russian equivalent of "Doc Brown" (aka native18 on RCdesign.ru forums) created a DeLorean quadrocopter that looks like the time-traveling vehicle from the sci-fi comedy movie series "Back to the Future." I admire the attention to detail in the homemade design and love the miniature Mr. Fusion machine in the rear. … Read more

Quadrotor robots are a hit with James Bond theme song (video)

Now robots can perform live music.

The University of Pennsylvania General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, which has attracted millions of viewers of its videos online, today released its latest demonstration of robot power.

The video shows a group of small quadcopter performing the theme song to James Bond movies. Introduced at the TED conference, the movie shows about ten of the flying robots emerge from boxes on the floor and start playing different instruments. … Read more

See nano quadcopter robots swarm (video)

In the future, a swarm of flying robots may do the work now done by human search teams.

A robotics research team at the University of Pennsylvania has designed a system to coordinate a number of small quadcopters, a step toward coordinating multiple robots for tasks such as surveillance or searching areas after a disaster.

The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception (GRASP) lab at UPenn yesterday posted a video on You Tube with nano quadcopters showing remarkable agility and the ability to perform as a team.

The quadcopters are able to flip over and maintain flight. More amazing (unnerving?) … Read more