Parrot, a company best known for its commercial drone products, has announced an all-new model, the Parrot Bebop Drone at sUSB Expo in San Francisco. Alike previous released version 2.0 of the A.R Drone, this is a full GPS-guided drone that is controllable using an Android smartphone or tablet. Bebop Drone is termed as A.R Drone 3.0 coming with a high quality 14MP camera that is able to capture 1080p videos.
The Parrot Bebop drone hopes to attract filmmakers and photographers with an increasingly high-quality flying camera, built-in GPS to fly programmed waypoints, and the ability to hover and pan the camera.Videos are recorded to Bebop’s 8 GB internal storage there’s no microSD or SD card slot) in MP4 format. Photos can be captured in JPEGs or Adobe DNG raw format. Parrot takes advantage of the extra resolution to let you digitally pan and zoom your picture as well as stabilize your shots on three axes.It allows Parrot to cut costs and keep the Bebop light — its maximum weight is 400 grams (14.1 ounces) — and compact. It measures roughly 12 inches (28 cm) square and 1.5 inches (3.6 cm) tall.
Parrot will also provide a specialized controller, the Skycontroller, which can extend the range of the Wi-Fi network up to two kilometers. But while the hummingbird-like drone can take videos with a 180-degree field of view, the Bebop drone can only stay in the air for 12 minutes.After that, it runs out of batteries. This device attaches itself to a smartphone or tablet and increases the signal to 36dBm.The HDMI port on the Skycontroller can be used to connect the Oculus Rift. This will allow users to control the drone by head movement alone. It is also limited to flying within the range of an 802.11ac Wi-Fi network while under direct pilot control.
The Bebop drone comes with a free piloting app, FreeFlight 3.0, for iOS and Android. The left thumb controls a virtual joystick that governs altitude, while the right stick controls the angle of title of the camera. When you tilt your smartphone or tablet, you can make the drone move forward, backward, left or right.Images captured by its camera will be transmitted directly to the display of the mobile device.
The Bebop Drone is slated for a fourth quarter release later this year. Parrots has not yet said how much the Bebop will cost. Its last quadcopter, the AR.Drone 2.0, costs just $300. If Parrot can keep the price below the competing Blade 350 QX‘s sub-$500 and DJI Phantom’s $1,200 price tags, it could easily be a top choice for beginning quadcopter users.
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