Parrot, maker of the trend-setting and extremely fun AR Drone family of flyable toys, is about to invade your home with a pair of fun robotic toys this Spring. While the current AR Drone is primarily designed for outdoor use, the new toys are clearly aimed at children as well as adults, and at the indoor toy market. Both are small, light, and much easier to control than the original AR Drones.
Parrot has done a lot to make the MiniDrone easier to fly than its larger cousins. It can be controlled with two fingers from a smartphone app, and letting up on both controls automatically returns it to a simple hover. Moving your phone around allows the phone’s accelerometer to control the drone’s direction. Also unlike the larger AR Drone, the MiniDrone can be bounced off walls or surfaces without losing its bearings. In addition to using its accelerometer and gyroscope, it uses a downward facing camera to help it maintain its orientation. Unfortunately, the camera is only for the MiniDrone’s use — unlike with the AR Drone and Jumping Sumo, you can’t stream its camera to watch from your phone.
Parrot has switched from WiFi to Bluetooth Smart (Low Energy) for controlling the new MiniDrone. This allows for simpler, and therefore smaller and lighter, circuitry on the tiny quadcopter. While it decreases the top range of the MiniDrone to 100 feet or so (Parrot claims up to 160 feet in clear air) that’s probably plenty for piloting a device by eye with no streaming video. Its battery is expected to last 6-7 minutes, which of course also limits its effective range. By contrast, the Jumping Sumo uses 802.11ac WiFi, allowing either 2.4GHz or 5GHz connections.
These two bad boys are going to be on everyone’s Christmas List this year! We are super excited to be bringing the Jumping Sumo and Rolling Spider (The Stuff You Want) from Parrot to all you Yuppies right here in South Africa.
Be prepared for the invasion!