Ever wish your Lego bricks could fly? Someone invented the next best thing — BitDrones are tiny box drones that work like 3D building blocks.
Created at Queen’s University, BitDrones are physical manifestations of pixels, made for the real world. There are three different kinds of BitDrone: PixelDrones come with an LED light for different colour capabilities, while ShapeDrones are mesh building block drones. DisplayDrones are basically flying smartphones, with flexible high resolution video cameras and Android smartphone boards.
The video demonstrates the three different BitDrone capabilities. By swiping left and right, the operator goes hands-free to browse through “files” like you would on a smartphone.
While only a dozen BitDrones actually exist so far, the team plans on manufacturing thousands of smaller versions to render more complex and high resolution matter.
“If we can get them small enough to be grains of sand then they would stick together very much like clay,” Human-Computer Interaction Professor Roel Vertegaal told Gizmodo.
This means you could have your own version of Claytronics that you could manipulate and shape with your hands — but in mid air!
This kind of technology could be used in a number of fields, from 3D and molecular modelling, gaming, architecture visualisation — and even remotely building in space.
Next up, mind control drones.
Image and video via: Human Media Lab/Queen’s University