Skybotix CoaX Autonomous Micro-Helicopter Drone

The Skybotix CoaX UAV Drone is an autonomous micro helicopter. It is a coaxial helicopter robot ideal for research and education. It features two brushless motors for the rotors and two servo motors for guidance. To communicate, the Skybotix CoaX uses a Bluetooth connection and also an optional WiFi module. It can be guided with a 2.4 GHz remote control. It has numerous applications and that's what makes it interesting. The Skybotix Drone can be used in professional fields: for customs patrols; monitoring traffic; searching for people in natural disasters and/or fires, avalanches, etc.; collecting information for the police, from maps, aerial photos and inspections of bridges and dams. For education, it can be used for non-linear systems from autonomous navigation, estimation theory, from real-time control, from analysis in frequency fields, etc. Two months ago, Helen Greiner, iRobot's co-founder, won a contract worth several million dollars for her new company, Cyphy Works, to develop a new type of autonomous flying device able to inspect infrastructures, bridges, etc. But why develop this type of product? It doesn't make too much sense because... RobotShop has it available for sale already!! A video showing the CoaX using an optical mouse sensor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDuq6y9siOE Here it operates at a fixed distance from a wall allowing two people to bounce it back and forth as in table tennis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vkjbCxqllk