Tag: patent

Disney’s “Flixel” Drone will Replace Fireworks

With the wrangling over whether it’s safe to fly a drone through fireworks (http://www.wired.com/2015/07/youre-thinking-flying-drone-fireworks/), Disney thought about the idea from a different angle. Their patent application mentions how dangerous fireworks can be, and a swarm of drones with lampshades is not. If you thought about flying your Phantom through fireworks was ballsy, try it with a swarm of Flixels. It might feel like piloting the Millennium Falcon through a flaming asteroid belt. Here is an […]

Anti-drone-jacking Software, Courtesy of a DARPA Contractor

You know that crop-dusting drone you have dusting your crops? I bet that sucker could carry a couple of nasty objects too, and it’s neat that you can feed GPS waypoints into its nav interface to have it fly anywhere you want. It’s not the plot of a movie if Insitu Inc. gets this patent. Citing some staggering statistics about the cost-effectiveness of drones (a chopper costs over $200/flight-hour to operate, a drone costs a […]

Disney’s Flying Eye Will Eavesdrop and Talk Back

Title: “Aircraft, Methods for Providing Optical Information, Method for Transmission of Acoustic Information and Method for Observing or Tracking an Object” US Patent Application Publication No: 20150078620 Filed (PCT): April 19, 2013 Published: March 19, 2015 Details: Did you know that Disney has a worldwide network of research facilities? Their Zurich branch has access to 21 Nobel laureates via the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH). As it happens, Disney Research and ETH are […]