Want To Fly Micro Aerial Vehicles With Your iPhone? There's An App For That

The iPhone is capable of doing all sorts of odd things thanks to the 65,000+ apps available in the App Store.  One thing I never really imagined it would be able to do is fly a micro aerial vehicle (MAV), but thanks to the fine folks at MIT's Human and Automation Lab, there is now an app for that. Professor Missy Cummings and her team of students have been able to utilize the iPhone's touch screen and accelerometer controls to manually fly a micro aerial vehicle (MAV) and even have it follow waypoints.  They chose to tackle this project because current military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) controls are housed in large, heavy briefcase-like enclosures.  These enclosures can be difficult to lug around, making these hand-launched UAVs less than ideal at times to take out into the field. The team's proof of concept tests were done with a small, commercially available MAV, but you get the idea:

Besides flying manually, the iPhone operator is able to make the MAV follow set waypoints.  On-screen buttons are available for launching and landing the craft, and the MAV's on-board camera is able to stream video directly to the iPhone app. Of course the whole point of this isn't just for playing around, although it does sound like a whole lot of fun.  Imagine if the military were to actually adopt this simple enough technology to lighten the load for soldiers in the field.  No more lugging around heavy equipment, just whip out your iPhone and launch a UAV within seconds.  The iPhone app could also be used for non-military operations, such as dangerous explorations, rescue missions, and basically anywhere a MAV could be deployed. Now if only they would send me a test unit... a lot of fun could be had with this kind of expensive technology.

[via Singularity Hub]

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