Tempest, who has been making magic with everything from Apple iPads to robots for years, took eight $120 Parrot drones and some technology from Dronsis to create the illusion that he can control a drone swarm with gestures and voice. This is Tempest’s second foray into drone control and easily his most effective.
The tiny drones, which dance around Tempest and appear to respond to his commands, also take on a personality. They even appear to trade LED lights. Tempest notes that humans can’t help but anthropomorphize technology when it does things that appear to go beyond standard gadget abilities. In reality, the drones self-localize by using the pattern on the carpet where Tempest is standing.
Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
