Have you seen the Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter
?  The Parrot is an Augmented Reality + FPV combat product that is controlled via Wi-Fi from your iPod, iPad or iPhone touch. But they say they are working on support for other platforms, hopefully Android is in the list, and I bet it is. It’s bound to satisfy some or all of your air combat and dog fighting needs.  The Parrot AR.Drone is a cool looking product with a heck of a lot going for it, and some improvements required, but in general I think it will be a blast. The biggest complaint I hear is that the frame rate is pretty low, around 15 frames per second.  When you consider the processing and other things involved this is not too surprising, but could seem a bit choppy. 

The AR.Drone’s have markings on them which let the camera on your iPhone, iPod or iPad identify what you are aiming at, via networking you and your opponent(s) dogfight against each other to shoot each other down through the augmented reality interface.  The leaning and tilting of the phone control these hovering aircraft, which are quite similar to the quadrapod type designs seen in other FPV and autonomous model aircraft designs.

Do yourself a favor and watch the video, then think of what you might be able to do with a model such as this. Rumor has it that the selling price will be around 350USD but it looks like fun and may be worth it to have a cool little piece of tech. Maybe get a few people at the office involved and buying some Parrot AR.Drones and have lunchtime massive FPV dogfights! I think I’ll be getting one once they come out with an Android compatible version.   Multi-platform support will be awesome, even your like/dislike for another persons mobile platform won’t keep you from dogfighting, and heck might even be the cause of some!  Which is the better dogfight controller?  The Android or the iDevice(?)

What do you folks think!? Do you own one, do you want one, do you not want one?

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