So often in our life, science imitates nature and this newest robotic invention is no exception. The cleverly named Dragonfly is designed to mimic, you guessed it, a dragonfly. And like it’s living counterpart, this soon-to-be creation can hover in place as well as dart effortlessly through the skies.
The Techject Dragonfly, is an unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV) developed by Georgia Tech, backed with $1 million in funding from the Air Force. While it may have been designed for the military, the Dragonfly will also be released to the general public. Why do you need it? You could take aerial shots of yourself slaloming down a ski slope, use it as a next gen gaming platform, keep video surveillance on your home or, of course, spy on your neighbors.
The customizable dragonflies come in a variety of flavors from basic flight control using gyroscopes and accelerometers to more advanced packages which include GPS, HD video, multiple cameras and wireless communication. You can choose a color to suit your needs and upgrade pretty much every element from the actuator to the wings.
About the size of a human palm and weighing in at 0.8 oz, this latest gadget is sure to be delicate. The good news is, you’ll get around 10 minutes of hover time and 30 minutes of flight time thanks to that light weight and it’s lithium polymer battery.
Techject aims to raise $110,000 to get the project up and running and with all this buzz, they might just reach that goal in under 24 hours. You can fund the project today by picking up a basic package for as little as $99, or go all out with a full blown swarm for $949.
