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Fly a drone from the pilot’s seat with Oculus Rift

No company has done more to make unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – aka drones – more affordable and easy to use than Parrot. It’s low-cost quadcopters have pretty much become synonymous with the technology outside of military use, and thanks to a new tie-in with Facebook’s virtual reality headset gizmo Oculus Rift, it just made remote control hovercraft flying a lot sexier too.

Parrot’s new Bebop quadcopter has been developed with filmmakers and professional photographers in mind, as it features a new high-quality flying camera and a built-in GPS. But the best part of the new unit is that, once combined with the optional Skycontroller, it automatically supports the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift.

If you connect the Rift to the Skycontroller via HDMI, you will be able fly the Bebop in a first-person view. To position the camera, all that you then have to do is tilt your head to either side to rotate or turn the drone accordingly.

The Skycontroller features two joysticks and an amplified WiFi radio with four antennas. This allows you to fly the drone as far as two kilometres away, and traditionally you would be able to view the flight through a tablet or smartphone that easily clips into place.

In terms of specifications, it features a 14-megapixel on-board camera, capable of capturing a bird’s eye view in full 1080p resolution, with a fish-eye lens and a 180-degree field of view.

But you shouldn’t be looking up to the skies in search of the new Bebop just yet. The company has to iron out a few issues in the current design, and working off a 1200mAh battery pack potential users will have to limit their flying time to just 12 minutes.

It is, however, expected to hit the store in Q4 of this year, it will cost between $300 (R3 100) and $1000 (11 000) .

[Image – Parrot]

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