Calling All iPad Pilots: The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0
April 13, 2012
A lot of iPhone and iPad accessories are released every year. Some of them fall by the wayside, and some of them soar above the pack. Parrot’s AR.Drone 2.0 is most definitely one that flies high, thanks in no small part to its low-weight carbon fiber structure and four sets of rotating blades. (I bet your travel keyboard doesn’t have those!) The company has recently announced that pre-orders of their follow-up to the original AR.Drone quadricopter will start shipping in May, and even with a substantial price tag of $300, there’s a lot to get excited about in this new model.
Taking the AR.Drone 2.0 to new heights are a number of improvements over their first attempt, which was fun but fragile and at times a bit buggy. This time around, a completely redesigned hull will actually survive all of the risky maneuvers you can’t help but attempt, thanks to the use of some futuristic plastics that were not included before. Hopefully you never have to put those structural advancements to the test, as the piloting system has also been redesigned to allow tighter control in the form of true one-to-one motion between the user and the quadricopter, which Parrot has deemed “Absolute Control.” To harness all of this newfound power, the iOS and Android Freeflight controller apps have been re-imagined with new menus, settings, and better access to the AR.Drone 2.0’s camera, which has been HD-ified for your aerial spying pleasure. The onboard 720p wide-angle camera will capture, encode, and stream video directly to your handheld device at 30 fps as it cruises overhead, and the ‘copter itself can store photos and video to be copied later via USB.
It’s always hard to make a value comparison between the AR.Drone 2.0 and other iPad accessories, considering that, well, no charging dock is going to even compete with an autonomous hovering drone that shoots HD video. But if your budget has flexible boundaries, and all of those business-first iPad accessories make you yawn, there’s a ton of fun to be had up, up, and away.
Alexei Bochenek is a lifelong tech nerd & film buff based in Los Angeles. When he’s not playing with his phone, it’s because the movie has started. Shhhhh!
