The end is near: the Japanese Ministry of Magic Defense have designed a spherical flying drone. It’s only a matter of time before manhacks and scanners and countless sci-fi references by all the bloggers in the world. Well, that last one already happened. Still, you can’t deny that it’s pretty futuristic. The drone, about the size of a beach-ball, has an upward-facing propeller that allows it to hover, but also wings that allow it to turn that propellor forward for horizontal movement. It also has 3 gyroscopes so it can always tell which way is up, something any sphere will tell you is important.
The idea apparently grew out of an attempt to create devices that could fly horizontally, but take off and land vertically. Harrier jets, basically, except more reliable and cheaper. The sphere reportedly cost about $1,400. The sphere shape came up as a natural extention of that idea and can effectively take off and land anywhere. There are all kinds of applications for this technology, but I’m sure you can figure them out yourself, so I won’t bore you. If you can’t figure any out, go watch any sci-fi movie.
Video of the little guy in action after the jump.
(via Mashable)
- This is quite different from the Japanese minimalist walking robot
- These drones can hack Wi-Fi
- And these drones can get hacked
