Micro UAV, rugged with ducted air. I can't wait until these are childrens toys.

Re:Micro UAV, rugged with ducted air. I can't wait until the... by axiom on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @01:54PM (#56973)

Here's a toy that's close enough. A group at Waterloo made one of these things autonomous, and had it navigating GPS waypoints.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/79c7/

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Re:Micro UAV, rugged with ducted air. I can't wait until the... by ivankirigin on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @02:02PM (#56979)

RC heli's are plagued with stability issues. I suppose what I'm looking for is the performance at a toy's price. Considering the MUAV costs probably around $60,000, this might take some time.

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Re:Micro UAV, rugged with ducted air. I can't wait until the... by axiom on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @02:31PM (#56992)

The product spec for this thing says it's automatically stabilizing, but I've never played with one so I can't vouch for it. I've seen some demo videos and it looked really impressive.

In any case, you can always buy one of these for a mere 90-450k http://www.moller.com/videom200x.htm

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Re:Micro UAV, rugged with ducted air. I can't wait until the... by ivankirigin on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @02:37PM (#56995)

Some can be really good.

Another big difference is live video from the heli. That means you can tele-operate it beyond line of sight if you have good enough radios. GPS waypoint following is also essential when going out of line of sight.

You can see how the platforms grow in complexity and cost just to be useful at all.

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