helicopters

Flying Drones with Jedi Mind Tricks

Flying Drones with Jedi Mind Tricks

Since last we saw NeuroSky’s mind-reading game controller (at last year’s GDC), developers have been hard at work finding fun and interesting ways to use the device. I got a chance to try a few of them out and to move things with my mind. First up was an Unreal mod called Throw Trucks with […]

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The World’s First Helicopters

This is a wonderful collection of black-and-white newsreel footage, assembled by the company that invented the newsreel, showing a montage of early helicopter prototypes in all their wacky and frequently-terrifying glory. It’s a highlight reel, about two minutes long, and the various clips that went into it are indexed, annotated, and available for watching in […]

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Helicopter with hydrogen-peroxide-rocket-powered blades

Helicopter with hydrogen-peroxide-rocket-powered blades

Shown above is a video of the Dragonfly DF1, an experimental aircraft under development by Swisscopter US. Instead of a traditional gasoline engine, the Dragonfly has peroxide-powered rocket engines on the tips of its main blades, with a mechanical take-off to drive the tail-rotor. Large tanks of high-test peroxide supposedly provide 50 minutes of flight at 40 mph.

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Autonomous micro helicopters

Autonomous micro helicopters

While doing research for the next issue of MAKE, I discovered this small company, Centeye, right here in my own Northern, VA backyard. They’re developing vision chips for autonomous robotic aircraft. They have several videos on their site, showing various types of tests. Unfortunately, the videos are in WMV format only, and not on YouTube. […]

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