Parrot AR Drone First Hands-on Review. Get to understand your toy!
About the Inside flight: Here the Parrot AR Drone stands out. Push just one button, and the propellers spin up, then move into high-speed for that clean and stable lift off. It then moves at three feet, expecting more directions. In beginner mode (right button), it is easy to move and go up and down. In the pilot mode (left button), you are able to fly forwards and back and left and right. Put together both, and you essentially have full control.
The optical flow position hold is ideal on a uneven surface, as a patterned floor or tiled floor. On a entirely featureless ground (concrete or clean, unpatterned carpet) it might tend to drift a lttle bit. Total flight time is a bit below ten minutes in my experience.
When you fly above furnishings, the ultrasonic elevation hold could get confused. Often it climbs up when you fly over a sofa and often it goes down. Sometimes it will get so confused the AR Drone would go to the ceiling. But in general, it is doing a fairly good job.
Open-air flight: This is not the AR Drone most robust suit. To start, it certainly can't fly over 15 feet (because of the range of its ultrasonic sensor I guess). Additionally, the position hold actually only functions when there is zero wind flow. Should the wind picks up, the AR Drone starts to lean and shakes, and also the optical flow camera will lose the lock. Oftentimes this means it simply drifts, maybe it can scoot off in a random course after having a wind strong gust.
However should there be no wind, you'll be able to fly as far as the wifi connection allows you to. We've successfully tried up to a hundred feet.
Ritto Dameo greatly likes Rc flying as a hobby, because of that the Parrot AR Drone is like a dream coming true! You can see a FAQ about the drone at http://ar-drone.org and look for the very best AR drone price also!