Parrot Bebop

The software gimbal is a very nice trick: instead of moving the camera (with jerkiness and balance and extra control channels), they have a slightly down-angled 180-degree fisheye lens onto a big sensor. Then software stabilises and crops to present a slice of the view as if you were panning and tilting. Slick.

I&#x27;ve built several &quot;hobby grade&quot; multirotors with GPS and first-person video, and while I find the process fun and satisfying, it&#x27;s far from accessible to mainstream consumers. I was never impressed by Parrot&#x27;s original AR Drone, but this looks much more promising as an accessible drone with a good feature set. The biggest problem with the AR Drone, the control latency over WiFi, is probably covered up by the Bebop&#x27;s GPS stabilization.<p>It doesn&#x27;t look like there&#x27;s any pricing information for the Bebop yet. They should definitely be able to keep it under $500, and if so (and if it works as well as their demos portray) I bet they&#x27;ll sell well.

I had a parrot drone before. It went up to 30 feet, disconnected from Wifi, dropped from the sky, and when I was just about to catch it, it re-connected, turned and crashed into pieces.... Ever since then, I am not a very big fan of their technology. For slightly more, you can get much better drones which would be worth the investment.

Although this is interesting, I think DIY multirotors are where the revolution really is. I&#x27;ve built my own and it really isn&#x27;t that difficult, assuming you&#x27;re buying a kit for the frame and not manufacturing your own it&#x27;s hardly more involved than assembling a custom PC and can result in a drone able to carry a camera such as a GoPro for less than $200. If you are planning to do this though I&#x27;d recommend getting a small, cheap quadcopter like the Hubsan X4 to practise with first.

This passage:<p><i>[...] Bebop Drone navigation computer features a Parrot P7 dual-core CPU, quad-core GPU and 8 GB of Flash Memory[...]</i><p>was intriguing. I really don&#x27;t believe that they really have a custom &quot;Parrot P7&quot; CPU since that makes very little sense considering their use for the CPU. Also, even if they had designed their own CPU, why would they include a quad-core GPU for this application? That doesn&#x27;t make any sense, either.<p>Does anyone know more about that CPU? I don&#x27;t follow Parrot closely so perhaps I&#x27;m misjudging them.

One of my startup ideas couple of years ago was cheap stabilized mini dolly&#x2F;crane system for casual videographers. This space, I thought, was ripe for disruption considering tons of new professional grade cameras sporting HD video but other equipment remaining as expensive as ever.<p>Shooting with this kind of system really makes even bad video interesting.<p>Now I think drones could be just that dolly&#x2F;crane system. I hope people make their control software open source. The key would now be software that can produce super stabilized flights in artistic trajectories automatically.

This with the Oculus Rift combined is going to make for some seriously awesome &quot;tourism demos&quot;. Someone has to make a Bebop-as-a-service thing where you have warehouses full of Bebops across the world&#x27;s largest tourist centers, then a paying user will have his&#x2F;her Rift linked up with that Bebop, which will then fly high above the city&#x27;s ground and let the tourist have a look at the city from the comfort of his&#x2F;her home.

Because it hasn&#x27;t been said. I love the name. A drone with really effective image stabilization? You might even call it &quot;Rocksteady.&quot;

I had a Parrot AR.drone. After one too many crashes the motherboard wouldn&#x27;t signal the motors to start. I sent it back to the store I bought it from, who promptly gave me $300 in store credit rather than another drone. Although I would rather have had another drone. When I asked the CSrep she explained they stopped carrying them because the high return rate. My son and high had a lot of fun flying it indoors and I&#x27;m looking for another.<p>I&#x27;m fascinated by this drone[1]. Variable pitch rotors means it has the agility of a helicopter, including inverted flight (upside-down). Only downside is there is 1 motor so 1 single point of failure.<p>[1] <a href="http://curtisyoungblood.com/V2/products/quadcopters/stingray-500" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;curtisyoungblood.com&#x2F;V2&#x2F;products&#x2F;quadcopters&#x2F;stingray...</a>

This is amazing. With some camera smoothing in post production you could have shots that were previously only possible with a helicopter shot. I can see this being just as influential if not more than the gopro.

The big innovation here over comparable camera-stablizied GPS-locked drones (eg. DJI Phantom II) is that there is no mechanical gimble which significantly reduces weight and battery consumption of the Bebop.

I&#x27;m more interested to see a small drone that can carry a small load, say of a couple to a few pounds. This could start to disrupt the small package&#x2F;food delivery industry on a massive scale while cutting emissions and increasing service quality. We have seen plenty of small drones meant to be used for surveillance; it&#x27;s not very interesting anymore.

Owning an AR.Drone 2.0 the thing I most hate is using their mobile app to control them. The Bebop looks small enough to make it worth using my mobile to control it. I can see why the introduced the Skycontroller which looks pretty interesting. Saw a guy build something like this for his homemade drone.<p><a href="http://blog.parrot.com/2014/05/12/introducing-parrot-skycontroller/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.parrot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;12&#x2F;introducing-parrot-skycont...</a>

I&#x27;m surprised no one has mentioned the IRIS by 3DRobotics. It uses a brushless gimbal to provide the image stabilization and is made largely of plastic components that can be replaced easily. I have their hexa-copter (built from a kit) and have been very happy with it.<p>Two things worth pointing out that I think are very important:<p>* The IRIS uses RC plane blades so they are cheap to replaces<p>* The piloting software is open source

I think this has the potential to be the next big thing. Not necessarily this particular device, but the idea itself.<p>There are lots of applications for these types of devices. - News reporting - Surveillance and recon - Security (couple it with a wireless charger) - Entertainment<p>All of these can be broken down even further into different industries etc.

Tiny website design nitpick: the black vertical nav bar on the left side looks like I should be able to grab and drag the black circle, but I can&#x27;t.

is this thing named after Cowboy Bebop? the controller design looks almost exactly like something from that tv show.

two thoughts.. what flavour of Linux? and 2km range with wifi, legal, how?<p>We do similar stuff, just with big boy tools.. Red EPIC and octos, 3 axis gyros - <a href="http://londonhelicam.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;londonhelicam.co.uk</a>

Did anyone else catch the &quot;distorsion&quot; typo in the video? What is it with typos that makes you want to point them out? Is it that important to us (me) to feel superior? Or is there a tiny bit of altruism hidden somewhere...

It all looks very cool, but that 12 minute battery life :(

What beach is that in the header image? It looks nice.