The clever folks at UC Berkeley have developed a system to issue commands to unmanned aerial vehicles using a device we all know and love: the iPhone.
While the iPhone is specifically restricted from piloting the drones themselves, the team uses Mobile Safari on the iPhone to enter coordinates and select tasks for its airborne fleet. A web server then relays the tasks to the aircraft mid-flight.
The video shows, in real time, an exercise where a remote-controlled airplane is instructed to photograph a particular area underneath it. The photo is then transmitted wirelessly back to a workstation at ground control.
While not quite James Bond-level technology yet, it's certainly an extreme study in using the iPhone as a remote control.
[Via Hack a Day.]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-18-2008 @ 9:38AM
w00t said...
MobileSafari?
Sounds more like it's an extreme study in using the iPhone as a browser :)
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6-18-2008 @ 10:59AM
Ryan Trevisol said...
So you can only fly spyplanes where there's edge reception?
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6-18-2008 @ 11:00AM
spyker said...
That would kinda suck, I'm surprised they didn't just make some app to control it. This isn't really using an iPhone to control a UAV, it's using the internet to control a UAV.
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6-18-2008 @ 12:16PM
Ryan said...
That's what I was going to say, they were just using their laptop that is sitting right next to them in the video to control this, and now they are using the browser on their Iphone... big whoop. I don't think they are using edge, they probably have a WIFI network they are connected to. An Iphone specific app might be a little more impressive, but even then it's nothing more than porting a browser implementation to an iphone implementation. I think they are just proving its nice to control stuff on portable devices (aka the latest craze iphone), since their laptop isn't portable enough?
6-19-2008 @ 12:50PM
rod gutierrez said...
i've written a native iphone app that acts as a operator control unit for the irobot packbot. right now the app provides controls for the operator to drive the robot, and a video feed from the robot is displayed on the screen. this is done without a proxy, or mobile safari. once the iphone SDK is out of the silly NDA i will post a video.
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