Drone Quadricopter Power Edition Fly up to 165 feet from your Wi-Fi device Stream live PoV pilot video while flying Drone flies for up to 36 minutes with dual batteries Customize the look of your droneDrone helicopter brings military-style amusement to the iPhone Sure, the iPhone does a commendable job with heavy-duty 3D acceleration for intense virtual reality gaming, but funk that noise -- these guys want to bring you the real thing. Parrot -- better known for its Bluetooth accessories -- has introduced the AR.Drone, a WiFi-enabled remote control helicopter that takes its commands from the iPhone or iPod touch of your choice. The wacky toy has a pair of on-board cameras, one to help steady itself and the other to beam a live bird's-eye view (almost literally, if you pretend for a moment that this is in fact a bird) from the captain's seat onto your phone's screen. Parrot's mainly pushing the hardware here -- it's offering up a host of open source goodies to help developers learn about the product and figure out how to turn it into a must-have toy with replay value, and they'll have plenty of time to do so since it won't be available to consumers until "sometime in 2010."

Follow the break for a video of the AR.Drone mercilessly hunting down and destroying all who dare oppose it.Drone helicopter brings military-style amusement to the iPhone | From around the web ear iconeye icontext fileLAS VEGAS--This is the coolest toy I've ever seen: the Parrot AR.Drone, a remote-controlled helicopter with a twist. It's controlled over Wi-Fi from an iPhone or iPod Touch, and it's got a camera in its snout that streams to your iPhone's screen. The copter itself is computer-stabilized, so controlling it is much easier than the standard $40 toy RC helicopter you may be familiar with. But it should be: it'll cost in the neighborhood of $500, when it ships this year. You'll get about 15 minutes of battery-powered fun on a 1-hour charge. You tilt your iPhone to steer the helicopter, with touch controls to adjust altitude. The iPhone app features a virtual game mode, where the screen will show virtual enemies in front of your real 'copter, for you to strafe.

Or you can just fly it around to spy on pets or neighbors. Two caveats, though: Its range is limited by Wi-Fi. If it manages to lose contact with your phone it will hover for a minute until you walk back into range (or it runs out of batteries). And it only works in still air or very light wind. If you take it out to your yard and try to fly it up over your house, you'll probably hit some currents that make it uncontrollable, I was told.ar drone 2 gimbal Parrot plans to open up the Wi-Fi control interface. parrot ar drone toolsI can't wait to see what the geeks come up with when that happens.what is the best parrot ar droneDrone RC Helicopter Reviewparrot ar drone long distance

1 - Parrot AR. 2 - Parrot AR.Drone Perfomance and Conclusion UK Price (as Reviewed): £299 (inc. VAT) US Price (as Reviewed): $299 (ex. tax) Due for release on 18 August in the UK and in September in the US. We get bombarded by emails letting us know that such-and-such has launched or that company X is holding an event for some reason. A fair few of these mails are tat, fired off by marketing managers or company reps desperate to get people to attend their event. ar drone parts amazonOccasionally though something catches our eye, such as the AR.parrot ar drone 2 motorDrone is a remote-controlled quadricopter - a helicopter with four propellers - that has been designed and developed by French company Parrot. parrot ar drone price us

The company is a Wi-Fi and networking specialist, and made its name in the automotive industry - if you connect your phone or MP3 player to your car stereo then you’re probably using Parrot tech. It’s the use of this expertise that makes the AR.Drone unique, as it’s not controlled via a remote control like a regular RC helicopter. Drone is actually controlled via an app for iPhone or iPod Touch, with the Apple device connecting to the AR.Drone via an ad-hoc network created by the quadricopter. Needless to say, we were intrigued.Drone looks pretty menacingDrone is built around an ARM9 processor and 128MB of DDR RAM running at 200MHz. It’s not much, but it’s enough to run the small Linux OS that forms the brain of the device. The guts of the AR.Drone also contain a wireless 802.11b/g antenna, a 3-axis accelerometer, a 2-axis gyrometer and a high-precision, single-axis yaw gyrometer. In addition to this, the AR.Drone sports an ultrasound altimeter and a camera on its base which point at the floor, and a camera on its nose which points ahead.

There is no denying that the tech crammed into the AR.Drone is impressive, and to avoid it all getting pulped the first time you perform a crash landing it needs some form of protection. This comes in the form of a moulded EPP hull that holds the electronics firmly in place. On top of this fits a shell - the coloured upper part of the AR.Drone - that braces the battery in place. The upper shell comes in two flavours, an outdoor one that's smaller, lighter and only covers the heart of the machine, and an indoor version that encompasses the blades too for extra safety. The top shell is attached by magnets. Once your iPhone or iPod Touch has connected to the ad-hoc WiFi network of the AR.Drone, the app allows you to control it via on-screen controls and the accelerometer in the iPhone or iPod. We used an iPhone. The controls for the AR.Drone are straightforward: tilting the phone forward moves the drone forward, tilting the phone left makes the drone bank left, and so on. Rotation and altitude control is handled by an on-screen joystick.

Drone is left to its own devices, it uses the on-board ultrasound altimeter to hover in place, maintaining its height and bearing. The downward facing camera also comes into play here, allowing the AR.Drone to work out if it’s being blown out of place by a breeze and adjust accordingly. One of the most fun features is the forward facing camera, which runs at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, and streams the video to the controlling device. This effectively allows you to pilot the drone even when it’s out of line of sight (perfect for sneak attacks) and the feed can be recorded too. Drone also supports augmented reality games, whereby targets or monsters are added to the image displayed on the iPhone's screen that then have to be shot down. You can also use this function to have dogfights between two drones, though we didn’t get to test how well this works. The output from the camera is streamed directly the the controlling device. The whole unit is powered by a 3-cell 1,000mAh battery which only lasts around 12 or 13 minutes.