Draganfly X4 UAV: Tiny, Camera-Packing, UFO-Looking 'Copter Is Cheaper Than Ever [Helicopters]
Like the X6—featured in Giz Gallery 2008—the X4 is a carbon fiber-bodied UAV with four carbon fiber rotating blades. The 680-gram (with battery) copter is capable of using a still/video camera (in this case, a Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot), an infrared camera and a low-light camera, all of which can be controlled from the ground. The X4 also features three accelerometers, three gyroscopes, three magnetometers and a barometric pressure sensor, and the controller is based on an OLED touchscreen. The X4 only has four motors to the X6's six, but that comes at a big boon to the pricey 'copter: The X6 checked in at about $15,000, and the X4 should be more like $10,000.
So yeah, this thing is still super expensive. But it's also just about the best heli-cam we've ever seen, capable of flying both indoors and in inclement weather (up to 18mph of wind). Check out these videos at Draganfly's site to get a real sense of the true badassery of the copter. [Draganfly]
Dr. Quake of Stanford University only needed $50,000 and a month's time to complete a genome sequencing process which previously took $300 million, over 250 people, and several years. How cheap would Windows 7 be with this guy's cost-cutting?
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