I got a quadcopter as present for Christmas but I didn't enjoy it much - it is too hard to stabilize. I can't do anything with it. By comparison, a Syma 107 helicopter was much more fun.<p>So, quadcopter designers out there - please make them less fragile, less crash prone. Can you mount sensors in all directions to keep it from bumping into walls and hovering at the designated location without human intervention? That would be useful.
These guys were at Øredev in Sweden back in November - there's a video of their talk here - <a href="https://vimeo.com/53073656" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/53073656</a><p>Had a play with a Parrot at the same time and the CrazyFlie was much more nimble but relies on user control.<p>Felix Geisendörfer did a talk on hacking a Parrot AR at Øredev - <a href="https://vimeo.com/41836614" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/41836614</a> and it was great fun too.
Here are some papers that might be useful for budding quadrotor hackers and pilots: <a href="https://fling.seas.upenn.edu/~dmel/wiki/index.php?n=Main.Publications" rel="nofollow">https://fling.seas.upenn.edu/~dmel/wiki/index.php?n=Main.Pub...</a> and a video made by that school: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4</a>
This'll make a mean spycopter (i.e. for having fun with collagues).<p>I suppose putting a camera on it should be doable - but wth 250kbit/sec @ 80m, is it enough?<p>That'll probably give you 320x240 video (assuming that anything more than that will be too intensive to encode), which might not give you enough visual acuity to remote maneuver the quadcopter. Any thoughts?
I'm picturing putting two little prongs on the front of this and having it use image recognition to fly up to electrical outlets and recharge itself while hovering.<p>Then it could fly indefinitely.<p>I guess you'd need it to carry an AC/DC transformer though? Too heavy?
Really looking forward to seeing more and more of these nano quadcopters hit the market. I funded one on Kickstarter a fair number of months ago (still waiting on delivery) and can't wait to start playing with it.
If you're interested in serious quadcopters, check out the stunts these guys are doing: <a href="http://team-blacksheep.com/videos" rel="nofollow">http://team-blacksheep.com/videos</a>
How about swarms of these designed to fan out and seek out any humanoid mammal in the area and deliver a taser/ tranquilizer charge? The batteries will run out in a few minutes, but not before everyone in the area has been incapacitated or telemetry data has revealed the location of all people encountered by the swarm. This could be the basis of a new counter-terrorist weapon.
I wonder if it's possible to find another battery about a third of the capacity that's a third of the weight (or less if the quality is higher). Then there would be considerably more weight for a camera or other things.