Miniature unmanned aerial vehicles—more commonly known as drones—are increasingly smaller and cheaper. People have greeted this ease of acquisition and control with their usual inventiveness and a willingness to document the fruits of their geeky labor on YouTube.
Drone communities meet both online and in person to learn to fly. And the result of such gatherings? Meet the terror that drones in the night.
That’s 54 individual drones and a lot of hobby electronics combining to create something that actually kind of resembles an innovative personal helicopter. The official Volocopter test craft looks a lot more comfortable in its most recent design but started life requiring a pilot to sit in the open air on top of a ball—so maybe gasturbine101 is already ahead of the game.Yeah, yeah, it’s not technically a drone when there’s a person inside it steering. But no one will take the Swarm Manned Aerial Vehicle Multirotor Super Drone seriously if we all just called it a ROFLCOPTER.
It’s still a distant second to my personal favorite drone application, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CYT4PFV_Hs
Think that buzzing noise is a distant concern? On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted an aerial data collection company called Measure the approval to operate the largest fleet of drones in the U.S. The future’s so loud, we gotta wear earmuffs.Photo via gasturbine101/YouTube
